ABSTRACT
Attempts at optimizing classification of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) reflect clinical heterogeneity of this pathology and provide a basis for the search of new phenotypic markers (especially at the early stages of the disease) that could be useful for prognostication of its severity in individual patients. One of the potential makers is phenotyping of COPD with distinguishing bronchitic, emphysemic, and mixed phenotypes. This paper presents results of analysis of functional characteristics of the patients with these phenotypes. They are shown to reflect clinical and functional features of the disease that may be of value for diagnostic purposes, the choice of the treatment strategy and prognosis of the outcome in individual patients.