Extract
Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is a novel, nonpharmacological procedure for treatment of severe asthma. Recently, the Asthma Intervention Research 2 clinical trial demonstrated asthmatics had fewer hospitalisations following BT, which persisted 5 years after therapy [1]. However, it is well recognised that asthma is a heterogeneous disease with distinct asthma phenotypes and, not surprisingly, not all asthmatics in that trial benefited from BT [2].
Abstract
Optical coherence tomography small airway imaging may be used for better patient phenotyping and selection for BT http://ow.ly/MllnU
Acknowledgements
We thank Myles McKinnon, Jennifer Campbell and Chulho Hyun (British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada) for their assistance with the bronchoscopy procedures.
Footnotes
Support statement: M. Kirby gratefully acknowledges postdoctoral support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Bisby award, the CIHR Integrated and Mentored Pulmonary and Cardiovascular Training program (IMPACT), and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR). We also gratefully acknowledge the CIHR–Thoracic Imaging Network of Canada and the United States Public Health Service contracts N01-CN 35000 from the National Cancer Institute for the OCT technology development. The funding sources for this study played no role in the design and conduct of the study; in the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or in the preparation of the manuscript. The funding sources did not review the manuscript. S. Lam had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Funding information for this article has been deposited with FundRef.
Conflict of interest: Disclosures can be found alongside the online version of this article at erj.ersjournals.com
- Received January 29, 2015.
- Accepted April 10, 2015.
- Copyright ©ERS 2015