[Combination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and arterial hypertension in the elderly: clinical and hemodynamic features and quality of life.]

Clinical features, hemodynamics and quality of life of elderly patients with a combination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and arterial hypertension were assessed. The results of the study suggest that in the case of a combination of arterial hypertension and chronic lung disease, not only distinct clinical, functional and hemodynamic changes are observed, but also a significant decrease in the quality of life, largely determined by the severity of the symptoms of both diseases, as well as the severity of the comorbid pathology. The revealed changes in elderly patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and arterial hypertension dictate the need to optimize, first of all, the outpatient stage of observation and rehabilitation of elderly patients with comorbid pathology.

[The role of functional and instrumental research methods in the diagnosis and control of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the elderly.]

In more than 500 elderly patients with COPD, the frequency of spiral computed tomography (SCT) of the lungs and echo-CG of the heart was evaluated for diagnostic purposes and to monitor the course of the disease. The study showed that despite the high clinical significance of the FEV1 indicator (the volume of forced exhalation in the first second), the indicator itself is extremely non-specific when diagnosing COPD in elderly patients. The high specificity of lung CT makes it necessary to use this diagnostic method in elderly patients to detect morphological changes in the lungs in the presence of clinical signs of bronchial obstruction and negative spirometry data. It is necessary to strengthen the role of echocardiography in the diagnosis of chronic pulmonary heart disease and stratification of the severity of the underlying disease in elderly patients with COPD.