Study of red cell distribution width levels and its correlation with severity of disease in patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

Background:COPD has been accepted as component of systemic inflammatory syndrome. Red cell distribution width (RDW) is a measure of coefficient of variation of mean corpuscular volume which increases in chronic systemic inflammation. The aim of the study was to evaluate the RDW as a predictor of severity of COPD using BODE index.Methods:In this cross-sectional study 107 COPD patients were evaluated by measuring RDW and this was correlated with the severity of disease using GOLD staging.Results:RDW correlates well with COPD patients. Significant correlation of RDW with BODE index (r=0.650, p and It; 0.001), gold staging (r=0.459, p and It; 0.001), 6MWT (r=0.697, p and It; 0.001) were observed.Conclusions: RDW was found to increase in patients with increasing severity of COPD. Hence its potential role as a marker of severity of disease and in predicting risk of cardiovascular disease can be explored.