Our goal was to estimate the number of individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the Capital Region of Denmark and the need of resources required to implement the regional management programme for COPD.
We examined a total of 45,970 participants from the Copenhagen General Population Study (CGPS) using spirometry and a questionnaire.
The prevalence of spirometrically defined COPD among individuals older than 40 years of age was 15%, corresponding to 120,000 citizens in the Region. The number of individuals with moderate COPD (forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1): 50-80% of predicted value) was estimated to approx. 51,000 (6.4%), whereas at least 10,000 (1.3%) were expected to have severe or very severe COPD (FEV1