Diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and differentiation from asthma

In the primary care setting, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are common clinical challenges, which together affect approximately 25,000,000 Americans. As our therapeutic strategies for these two diseases diverge, it becomes important to distinguish between them. Although this may be relatively easy at the extremes of age using a combination of history and physical examination, this review focuses on additional information that may allow diagnostic distinctions to be made in the troublesome middle ground.