Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Latin America

Abstract

Background Latin America covers a vast geographic area (larger than the United States, Canada or Western Europe) with about 600 million inhabitants distributed in at least 19 countries. The population tripled since 1950, with a massive migration from rural areas to cities. Latin America is a mixed pot of ethnicities including the European, African, Mulatto, Mestizo and Amerindian individuals, in various proportions depending on the native population prior to the arrival of Europeans and the extent of European and African migration. Unfortunately, Latin America is one of the areas in the world with the widest disparity in income within and between countries, leading to a coexistence of diseases of poverty with those seen in developed countries. Tobacco-induced diseases, diabetes, obesity and the cardiovascular disease typical of developed regions and infectious diseases and problems related to violence often overlap in the same country. Prevalence of COPD in Latin America: Data from Population-based Studies Before several population-based surveys conducted in the early 2000s, information on respiratory diseases was very scarce, beyond the compulsory data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), mostly based on mortality statistics. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project (the latest conducted in 2013) [1] provided estimates

Retraction notice for: “Characteristics and risk factors for COVID-19 diagnosis and adverse outcomes in Mexico: an analysis of 89,756 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases.” Theodoros V. Giannouchos, Roberto A. Sussman, José M. Mier, Konstantinos Poulas and Konstantinos Farsalinos.Eur Respir J2020; in press.

“…A case series of 1590 patients from China reported a similarly low prevalence of these comorbidities among Chine patients [ 12 ]. The COPD prevalence in Mexico City was 3.4% in a study defining airflow obstruction as FEV1/FEV 6 below the 5th percentile or Lower Limit of Normal [ 23 ], but it has been reported that COPD is highly underdiagnosed in Mexico and in other countries, mainly because of lack of spirometry evaluation [ 24 ]. In a 2009 study, ischemic heart disease and stroke prevalence in Mexico City ranged from 0.4% to 5.4% and from 0.4% to 3.5%, respectively, depending on age [ 25 ].…”

Early diagnosis of COPD: myth or a true perspective

“…We reviewed data from smoking-induced COPD because there is a lack of information on early diagnosis in nonsmoking patients with COPD. However, in regions such as Latin America, more than one-third of patients with COPD were never-smokers, which determines that a significant proportion of patients adopt strategies based on similarities with cigarette smoke-induced COPD (symptoms, obstructions, exacerbations), rather than on scientific evidence [71].…”

Guía de Práctica Clínica Mexicana para el diagnóstico y tratamiento de la Enfermedad Pulmonar Obstructiva Crónica <br>GUÍA MEXICANA DE EPOC, 2020

“…Análisis más recientes de esta misma información estiman una prevalencia real cercana al 4%, la segunda más baja conocida para una ciudad, al igual que la mortalidad, que podría sufrir las mismas diferencias significativas territoriales en nuestro país. 4,5 El subdiagnóstico y el error diagnóstico de la EPOC son uno de los escenarios más desafiantes para México y el mundo. En el estudio PLATINO esto se evidenció cuando mostró que el 86% de las personas con EPOC no habían sido diagnosticadas (subdiagnóstico).…”