Multidisciplinary Evaluation for COPD Management.

COPD is a heterogeneous disorder. We developed a multidisciplinary evaluation scheme to identify patients with COPD who may benefit from phenotype-specific therapy. Our team of general and interventional pulmonologists, thoracic surgeons, radiologists, respiratory therapists, and advanced practice nurses meets monthly to discuss patients with advanced COPD.

Asthma Exacerbation Risk in Pregnancy and Postpartum: Assessing the Impact of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Other Key Factors.

Background: Asthma, affecting approximately 13% of pregnancies worldwide, and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), present in approximately 14%, are both associated with adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. This study aims to address a lack of current knowledge about how GDM affects asthma during pregnancy.

Objective: To determine whether GDM is associated with an increased risk of asthma exacerbations during pregnancy and the first year postpartum.

Development of an asthma health-care burden score as a measure of severity and predictor of remission in SARP III and U-BIOPRED: results from two major longitudinal asthma cohorts.

Background: Current asthma guidelines, including those of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and American Thoracic Society (ATS), suboptimally predict asthma remission, disease severity, and health-care utilisation. We aimed to establish a novel approach to assess asthma severity based on asthma health-care burden data.

Methods: We analysed prospectively collected data from the Severe Asthma Research Program III (SARP III; USA) and the European Unbiased Biomarkers for the Prediction of Respiratory Disease Outcomes (U-BIOPRED; 11 European countries) to calculate a composite burden score based on asthma exacerbations and health-care utilisation, which was modified to include the use of short-acting beta agonists (SABAs) to reflect asthma symptom burden.