Impaired cerebrovascular reactivity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Impaired cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is associated with stroke. Cerebrovascular diseases are common comorbidity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. The aim of our study was to quantify CVR in the anterior and posterior cerebral circulation during voluntary breath-holding in COPD patients according to airflow limitation severity. In this cross-sectional study, we compared 90 COPD patients without previous cerebrovascular disease and 30 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers (mean age 67 ± 7.9, 87 males). Using transcranial Doppler ultrasound and breath-holding index (BHI), we analysed baseline mean flow velocities (MFV) and CVR of middle cerebral artery (MCA) and basilar artery (BA). Our results demonstrated that COPD patients had lower baseline MFV of both MCA and BA than controls. COPD patients had significantly lower BHI m MCA and BHI m BA than controls (0.8 and 0.7 versus 1.24 and 1.07, respectively; p