| Summary: | Introduction:chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a preventable and treatable disease, generally progressive and associated with an abnormal inflammatory response of the lungs to harmful particles or gases, produced mainly by smoking. It primarily affects the lungs, but also produces significant systemic consequences.
Objective:to characterize the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of patients with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the Internal Medicine Service at "Dr. León Cuervo Rubio" Provincial General Teaching Hospital, during the year 2017.
Method:an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out, with 281 hospitalized patients with acute exacerbation of the disease. The information was collected from the patient's medical records. The ethical principles were observed.
Results:the highest frequency of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease occurred in the age group between 78-87 years (63,50 %), predominantly male gender (70,9 %); 62,27 % smoked at the time of the study. The disease that constituted the most frequent comorbidity was hypertension with 61,4 %. The main cause of admission was the increase in dyspnea with 91,0 %. Regarding treatment at discharge, it was observed that the most commonly used drugs were short-acting antibiotics and bronchodilators (90,2 %).
Conclusions:smoking is significantly associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, where the increase in dyspnea is the critical symptom of its exacerbation; the comorbidity that most affected this condition was hypertension. Short-acting antibiotics and bronchodilators were the most indicated drugs at discharge.
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