It is currently acknowledged based on the meta-analysis result that there is an increased risk of pneumonia in patients with COPD undergoing ICS treatment. However, this is not found to be true in those with asthma. No data on this risk are available for COPD patients involved in a pulmonary PR.
For the time of 12 months, the researchers prospectively studied 2 cohorts of COPD patients. The first group included 438 patients undergoing PR of which 353 were treated with ICS, and 85 were treated with bronchodilators only. The second group was significantly different in characteristics as it comprised of 76 COPD patients who were treated with ICS, but not PR. The control group consisted of 49 ICS-treated patients with asthma.
Overall, 6 cases of pneumonia were diagnosed in the first study group. This corresponded to a rate of 1.41 and 1.17%, respectively, compared to a rate of 6.6% in COPD patients not treated with PR, which was significantly higher than that in the first study group.
The study concluded through its findings that a significantly lower incidence of pneumonia is found in COPD patients treated with ICS and PR than in patients treated with ICS but not with PR.
Reference: https://clinicalmolecularallergy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12948-018-0090-y
