Epidemiology and treatment of heart failure with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Canadian primary care

AIMS: Heart failure (HF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are largely managed in primary care, but their intersection in terms of disease burden, healthcare utilization, and treatment is ill‐defined. METHODS AND RESULTS: We examined a retrospective cohort including all patients with HF or COPD in the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network from 2010 to 2018. The population size in 2018 with HF, COPD, and HF with COPD was 15 778, 27 927, and 4768 patients, respectively. While disease incidence declined, age–sex‐standardized prevalence per 100 population increased for HF alone from 2.33 to 3.63, COPD alone from 3.44 to 5.96, and COPD with HF from 12.70 to 15.67. Annual visit rates were high and stable around 8 for COPD alone but declined significantly over time for HF alone (9.3–8.1, P = 0.04) or for patients with both conditions (14.3–11.9, P = 0.006). For HF alone, cardiovascular visits were common (29.4%), while respiratory visits were infrequent (3.5%), with the majority of visits being non‐cardiorespiratory. For COPD alone, respiratory and cardiovascular visits were common (16.4% and 11.3%) and the majority were again non‐cardiorespiratory. For concurrent disease, 39.0% of visits were cardiorespiratory. The commonest non‐cardiorespiratory visit reasons were non‐specific symptoms or signs, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health. In patients with HF with and without COPD, angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker/angiotensin receptor–neprilysin inhibitor use was similar, while mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist use was marginally higher with concurrent COPD. Beta‐blocker use was initially lower with concurrent COPD compared with HF alone (69.3% vs. 74.0%), but this progressively declined by 2018 (74.5% vs. 73.5%). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of HF and COPD continues to rise. Although patients with either or both conditions are high utilizers of primary care, the majority of visits relate to non‐cardiorespiratory comorbidities. Medical therapy for HF was similar and the initially lower beta‐blocker utilization disappeared over time.