What is pre-COPD and do we know how to treat it?

No early case-finding programs have been proposed or validated, so we still have many patients diagnosed in the late stage of the disease. Clinically manifest COPD is characterized as typically progressive and irreversible with current therapeutic options. If we aim to reduce the mortality and morbidity from COPD we should target these steps: Prevention; Early diagnosis; Form registries of persons at risk for COPD development; Diagnose preclinical COPD; and discover new preventive therapeutic interventions.