[Epidemiology and prevention of COPD].

The prevalence of COPD when using spirometry data lies between 4% and 10%. However, health statistics do not fully account for COPD patients either, given the underdiagnosis of this disease reported between 30% and 50%. In the late stage, COPD is associated with a great impact on quality of life and repeated costly hospital stays. Given that COPD in its early stage would be easily preventable by means of smoking cessation, measures of early detection are urgently needed to prevent the COPD epidemic of the years to come.