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Statistics on COPD and Emphysema May 2002 COPD as a term that includes chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive bronchitis, and emphysema. According to the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, COPD was the fourth leading cause of death worldwide in 2000. It ranks fourth in the US as well, and is projected to move to third place by 2020. In 1998, approximately 107,000 Americans died of COPD. In general, mortality rates are higher in males than in females, and in whites than in blacks. In fact, according to the American Lung Association, COPD is the only lung disease category in which white Americans are disproportionately affected, and the only one for which the age-adjusted death rate for whites exceeds that for blacks. Statistics from the Center for Disease Control’s Center for Health Statistics confirm this trend. Black females have consistently the lowest COPD mortality rates, and the highest rate of increase in mortality has been in white females. These differences in mortality may be due to differences in the rates of smoking among blacks and whites and men and women. The same figures indicate that COPD ranked ninth as the cause of death among Hispanics and eighth among blacks, vs. fourth among Americans as a whole. There are approximately 16 million adult Americans with COPD. This number includes about 14 million with chronic bronchitis and 2 million with emphysema. In 1997 there were an estimated 13.4 million physician office visits and more than 600,000 hospitalizations for COPD. Mortality attributed to COPD has increased substantially in the US over the past 40 years. The direct and indirect costs of COPD to the US in 2000 were estimated to be nearly $30.4 billion. Direct costs (expenditures for hospital care, physician and other professional care, home care, nursing home care, and drugs) accounted for $14.7 billion and indirect costs (lost earnings due to illness and lost future earnings resulting from death) were $15.7 billion. By contrast, CDC statistics show that the prevalence of emphysema is fairly low in the general population. Over 1 million Americans have emphysema. There were 17,787 deaths from emphysema in 1998. Unlike chronic bronchitis, the rates for emphysema have been consistently higher in males than in females. Between 1982 – 1996, the rates decreased for males by about 52% but increased for females by about 19% indicating that the gender disparity between genders for emphysema has decreased. Emphysema rates are highest for males aged 65 years and over. More people in the Midwest have emphysema than any other region of the country. The rates are higher in whites than in blacks. According to the CDC, the prevalence rate for whites decreased by about 32%, but by only about 6% for blacks. The racial disparity in the prevalence rates for emphysema has also decreased due to a falling rate in whites. More information can be found in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Data Fact Sheet on COPD at: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/lung/other/copd_fact.htm |
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