Major cardiovascular risk factors are common in COPD patients, but are often  inadequately monitored, treated and controlled, observed a recent study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Led by Nathaniel M. Hawkins, assistant professor in the division of cardiology at the University of British Columbia, the study pointed out that COPD inherently conveys high cardiovascular risk due to cumulative smoking burden, advanced population age and the clustering of additional risk factors along with socioeconomic deprivation and lack of awareness. The cross-sectional study analysed medical records of 32,695 patients with COPD in the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network from 2013 to 2018 to find common risk factors in the cohort as 25% with diabetes, 50% (hypertension), 60% (dyslipidemia), 70% (overweight) and 80% (smoking history). The team pointed out that CV therapies were often underutilised in these patients.