Combination Therapy vs. Monotherapy for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), current guidelines generally recommend monotherapy (either long-acting β-agonists [LABAs] or long-acting anticholinergics) for patients with milder disease and combination therapy (inhaled corticosteroids [ICS] plus long-acting bronchodilators) for patients at high risk for exacerbations. In this retrospective, population-based, Canadian cohort study of 11,872 older COPD patients (age, ≥66), investigators compared initiating treatment with monotherapy versus combination therapy.

Using propensity matching, the researchers created clinically and demographically similar cohorts of 3160 patients who initiated treatment with LABAs alone and 8712 patients who initiated treatment with …