Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at increased risk of heart failure, researchers told the American Thoracic Society’s recent meeting in San Diego.

“The relationship between COPD and coronary heart disease has been well studied, but substantially less information exists concerning the co-existence of COPD and heart failure,” said lead author Srinadh Annangi from the Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta. Researchers reviewed 386,186,183 hospital records and identified 33,338,505 COPD patients aged at least 40 years.

Overall, 28.7 per cent of COPD patients had heart failure, compared to 13.0 per cent in the background population. African Americans were at especially high risk: 35.1 per cent of those with COPD had heart failure compared to 15.2 per cent of the background African American population. By way of comparison, 28.3 and 12.9 per cent of European Americans in the COPD and background populations respectively had heart failure.

Heart failure risk also rose with age. Eighteen per cent of patients aged 40 to 59 years with COPD also had heart failure, compared to 5.4 per cent of those without COPD. For patients aged 60 to 79 years, the proportions were 27.5 and 13.6 per cent respectively and 38.6 and 24.4 per cent respectively in those over 80 years of age.