Early Diagnosis and Treatment of COPD and Asthma — A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Shawn D. Aaron, Katherine L. Vandemheen, G. À. Whitmore, Céline Bergeron, Louis‐Philippe Boulet, Andréanne Côté, Andrew McIvor, Erika Penz, Stephen K. Field, Catherine Lemière, Irvin Mayers, Mohit Bhutani, Tanweer Azher, M. Diane Lougheed, Samir Gupta, Nicole Ezer, Christopher Licskai, Paul Hernandez, Martha Ainslie, Gonzalo G. Alvarez, Sunita Mulpuru
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Many persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma have not received a diagnosis, so their respiratory symptoms remain largely untreated. METHODS: ). RESULTS: increased by 119 ml in the intervention group and by 22 ml in the usual-care group (difference, 94 ml; 95% CI, 50 to 138). The incidence of adverse events was similar in the trial groups. CONCLUSIONS: In this trial in which a strategy was used to identify adults in the community with undiagnosed asthma or COPD, those who received pulmonologist-directed treatment had less subsequent health care utilization for respiratory illness than those who received usual care. (Funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research; UCAP ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03148210.).