Edilson Rodrigues Albuquerque

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

Introduction According to the definition by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), COPD is a heterogeneous lung condition characterised by chronic respiratory symptoms (dyspnoea, cough, sputum production, exacerbations) due to abnormalities of the airways (bronchitis, bronchiolitis) and/or alveoli (emphysema) that cause persistent, often progressive, airflow obstruction [1].