Seasonality, risk factors and burden of community-acquired pneumonia in COPD patients: a population database study using linked health care records.

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is more common in patients with COPD than in the adult general population, with studies of hospitalized CAP patients consistently reporting COPD as a frequent comorbidity. However, despite an increasing recognition of its importance, large studies evaluating the incidence patterns over time, risk factors and burden of CAP in COPD are currently lacking.

Methods: A retrospective observational study using a large UK-based database of linked primary and secondary care records was conducted.

Identifying Risk of Future Asthma Attacks Using UK Medical Record Data: A Respiratory Effectiveness Group Initiative.

Background: Asthma attacks are common, serious, and costly. Individual factors associated with attacks, such as poor symptom control, are not robust predictors.

Objective: We investigated whether the rich data available in UK electronic medical records could identify patients at risk of recurrent attacks.

Managing patients with stable respiratory disease planning air travel: a primary care summary of the British Thoracic Society recommendations.

Air travel poses medical challenges to passengers with respiratory disease, principally because of exposure to a hypobaric environment. In 2002 the British Thoracic Society published recommendations for adults and children with respiratory disease planning air travel, with a web update in 2004. New full recommendations and a summary were published in 2011, containing key recommendations for the assessment of high-risk patients and identification of those likely to require in-flight supplemental oxygen.