N Engl J Med
ATS 2024: Clinical trial shows benefits of finding, treating undiagnosed asthma and COPD
Researchers identified adults in the community with undiagnosed asthma or COPD and found that those who received pulmonologist-directed treatment had less subsequent health care utilization for respiratory illness than those who received usual care. The findings were presented at the American Thoracic Society annual meeting and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
- Investigators used a case-finding method to identify adults in the community with respiratory symptoms without diagnosed lung disease.
- Of 38,353 persons interviewed, 595 were found to have undiagnosed COPD or asthma and 508 were enrolled in a multicenter RCT and assigned to receive evaluation by a pulmonologist and an asthma-COPD educator who were instructed to initiate guideline-based care (n=253) or usual care by their primary care practitioner (n=255). The primary outcome was the annualized rate of participant-initiated health care utilization for respiratory illness.
- The annualized rate of a primary-outcome event was lower in the intervention group than in the usual-care group (0.53 vs. 1.12 events per person-year; incidence rate ratio, 0.48). At 12 months, the St. George Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) score was lower than the baseline score by 10.2 points in the intervention group and by 6.8 points in the usual-care group (difference, -3.5 points), and the CAT score was lower than the baseline score by 3.8 points and 2.6 points, respectively (difference, -1.3 points).
Source:
Aaron SD; UCAP Investigators. (2024, May 19). N Engl J Med. Early Diagnosis and Treatment of COPD and Asthma - A Randomized, Controlled Trial. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38767248/