Efficacy of a Self-Designed Questionnaire for Community Screening of COPD

Purpose: To evaluate the screening efficacy of a self-designed questionnaire for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and the potential gender disparity in its efficacy.

Patients and methods: A screening questionnaire, the COPD Screening Questionnaire-Minhang (COPD-MH), was designed with reference to the self-scored COPD population screener (COPD-PS) and the COPD screening questionnaire (COPD-SQ), incorporating characteristics of the local population in Shanghai, China. The revised questionnaire included only five questions. Each question scored 0-4, with a highest total score of 20. The COPD-PS and COPD-SQ comprised 5 and 7 questions, respectively. Their scoring criteria were not consecutive integers and, thus, not easily counted. The COPD-MH focused on symptoms, and each item was set the same answers for convenience. Screening for COPD was conducted among residents over 40 years old in a community in Shanghai using the three aforementioned questionnaires. Each participant also received spirometry tests. A receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn, and the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated to assess the validity of each questionnaire.

Results: A total of 1197 community residents in Minhang District completed the screening. A total of 1023 participants were finally included in analysis with a detected prevalence of 12.4% for COPD. The best cut-off values for the COPD-PS, COPD-SQ, and COPD-MH were 4, 16, and 7 points, respectively. The AUCs for these three questionnaires were >0.5, but the sensitivity of the COPD-MH was higher than those of the COPD-PS and COPD-SQ. The sensitivity of COPD-MH was 80.77% for males and 77.5% for females. The COPD-MH had higher diagnostic efficiency and higher sensitivity with gender-specific cut-off values.

Conclusion: The COPD-MH is comparable to and less time-consuming than the existing screening methods for COPD. Gender-related factors affect the optimal cut-off values of the COPD screening questionnaire, and rectifying this can improve the practical screening efficacy.