Late Breaking Abstract - Characterisation of patients with COPD in the ASTER study cohort

<bold>Introduction:</bold> ASTER is an ongoing Italian observational prospective multicentre study aimed to describe treatment patterns and clinical outcomes of COPD during a 6-month period in the Italian General Practitioner (GP) setting. Nota 99, published by the Italian Medicines Agency in 2021, has changed the management of the COPD, empowering GPs for a timely diagnosis by spirometry. Also, it offered potential for more appropriate initial prescription for patients with mild-moderate COPD by guidelines. <bold>Objective:</bold> Description of the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with COPD in the ASTER cohort. <bold>Results:</bold> Of 385 patients enrolled, 344 (89.3%) were eligible according to the ASTER criteria: 195 (56.7%) with COPD at enrollment (incident patients; treatment-naive) and 149 (43.3%) already diagnosed with COPD (prevalent patients, Table). At enrollment, the prevalent patients were on treatment with LAMA (49.0%), ICS/LABA (31.5%), LABA (6.7%), not treated (12.8%). <bold>Conclusions:</bold> Many eligible patients (n=195) were undiagnosed with COPD before enrollment. According to Nota 99, all were affected by only moderate bronchial obstruction. Incident vs prevalent patients had higher FEV₁, were slightly younger, more frequently employed, less frequently affected by comorbidities, severe dyspnea, and a bad quality of life. This suggests the need for screening of COPD in Italy by GPs for patients who can have fewer primary care visits. <bold>Funding:</bold> GSK (217466) <fig><object-id>erj;64/suppl_68/PA749/F1</object-id><object-id>F1</object-id><object-id>F1</object-id><graphic></graphic></fig>