Invited Review Series Introduction.

The presence of acute or chronic respiratory failure is often seen and considered as a terminal phase of COPD At present, however, we do not have firm predictive parameters of mortality in COPD patients. In a review, Curtis speculated that a patient with two or more of the following characteristics has a bad prognosis in a time frame of 1 to 3 years: FEV1 70 yrs. At this stage of the disease, it seems that no pharmacological treatment is able to influence the survival of these patients, except the use of long term oxygen therapy (LTOT) and possibly home noninvasive ventilation (NIV