In patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular comorbidities are highly prevalent and associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. This coincidence is increasingly seen in context of a "cardiopulmonary continuum" rather than being simply attributed to shared risk factors such as cigarette smoking. Overlapping symptoms such as dyspnea or chest pain lead to a worse prognosis due to missed concomitant diagnoses. Moreover, medication is often withheld as a result of unfounded concerns about side effects. Despite the frequent coincidence, current guidelines are still mostly restricted to the management of the individual disease. Future diagnostic and therapeutic strategies should therefore be guided by an integrative perspective as well as a refined phenotyping of disease entities.
Keywords: COPD; cardiovascular; comorbidities; diagnostics; therapy.