Changes in cognitive status across clinical stages in COPD

Introduction: COPD has been found to cause a general cognitive decline especially in cognitive functions like attention, psychomotor speed, memory and learning, visuospatial and constructional abilities, executive functions, and language skills. Clinical severity has been proposed as the main factor influencing cognitive impairment on COPD subjects. Aim and objectives: To compare the changes on cognitive status across two different clinical situations on COPD patients with severe and very severe COPD (GOLD 3 and GOLD 4, respectively). Methods: 70 COPD patients were evaluated at admission due to an Acute Exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD) and in stable stage. Montreal Cognitive Assessment was used to assess cognitive functions. The AECOPD measures were performed at hospital and stable measures were performed at patients home. Results: significant differences on cognitive status between both COPD severities at exacerbation (21.77 ± 2.30 vs 18.75 ± 3.60) with lower cognitive performance on MoCA total score on GOLD 4 patients . While, no significant differences were found on stable stage. Attention, language, abstraction, delayed recall and total score showed significant bigger changes on more severe COPD patients. Conclusions: Our study shows that cognitive status is modifiable during clinical situations on COPD.