Background: The patterns of medication use in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may change over time due to the availability of new medications, updates in guideline-based recommendations, and changes in patient and care provider preferences.
Objectives: To document population-level trends of filled prescriptions and costs for major classes of inhaled COPD therapies.
Method: We used administrative health databases of the province of British Columbia, Canada, from 1997 to 2015, to create a retrospective cohort of COPD patients. We documented the percentage of patients receiving major inhaled COPD-related medications, including short-acting beta-2 adrenoreceptor agonists (SABA), long-acting beta-2 adrenoreceptor agonists (LABA), inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), short-acting muscarinic receptor antagonists (SAMA), and long-acting muscarinic receptor antagonists (LAMA). We quantified the average, and relative annual change in, dispensed quantities and costs (in 2015 Canadian dollars [$]) of medications. Combination therapy was assessed as the proportion of time covered by two or more long-acting medications of different classes.
Read the full article in the Dove Medical Press.
