• Andreas Palm, Krister Ågren, Ludger Grote, Mirjam Ljunggren, Bengt Midgren, Josefin Sundh, J Theorell-Haglöw, and Magnus Ekström.
• Department of Medical Sciences, Respiratory, Allergy and Sleep Research, Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala, Sweden andreas.palm@medsci.uu.se.
• BMJ Open. 2020 Nov 19; 10 (11): e040396.

PurposeChronic hypoxic and hypercapnic respiratory failure and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) are chronic diseases associated with decreased quality of life and increased mortality. The rationale behind the set up the retrospective nationwide DISCOVERY cohort was to study several questions including disease course and risk factors for incident disease, impaired quality of life, hospitalisation risk and mortality in patients with chronic respiratory failure with long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT), long-term mechanical ventilation (LTMV) and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) on treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP).Participants And SettingsData from the national quality registry for respiratory insufficiency and sleep apnoea (Swedevox) and a population-based control group from Statistics Sweden were merged with governmental registries, the Swedish Cancer Registry, the Swedish Cause of Death Registry, the Swedish Drug registry, the Swedish National Patient Registry and the Swedish Dental Health Registry and with national quality registries for diabetes, rheumatic diseases (Swedish Rheumatology Quality Registry), stroke (RiksStroke), heart failure (RiksSvikt), acute heart infarction care (SwedeHeart) and intensive care (SIR) and with socioeconomic data from Statistics Sweden (SCB).Findings To DateThe cohort comprises 25 804 unique patients with LTOT since 1987 (54.1% females, age 73.3±9.8 years, body mass index (BMI) 26.6±6.5 kg/m2), 8111 with LTMV since 1996 (48.6% women, age 60.6±16.9 years, BMI 32.9±10.8 kg/m2), 65 809 with OSA on CPAP since 2010 (29.5% women, age 57.2±12.5 years, BMI 31.9±6.2 kg/m2) and 145 224 persons in a population-based control group from same time span up to March 2018 (51.7% women, age 49.9±20.4 year, BMI 24.9±4.0 years).Future PlansIn patients with chronic respiratory failure and sleep apnoea important questions regarding comorbidity burden, hospitalisation rate, mortality and treatment outcomes are still unexplored to a large extent. The DISCOVERY cohort will provide unique opportunities by its size and comprehensiveness to fill this clinically relevant gap of knowledge.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.

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