COPD-pulmonary

Chief Investigator:

Prof Richard Riley

Principal Investigator:

Dr Peymane Adab (University of Birmingham)

Funder name / reference number: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme: Project ID: RP-PG-0109-10061
Year 2011 -2016 (60 months)

Study design

Randomised trial and cohort studies.

Primary objective

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an increasingly important chronic disease of the lungs, affecting 5-10% of the population worldwide and accounting for 1.4m GP consultations and 1m hospital bed-days per year in the UK.  There are also around 24 million working days lost each year attributable to COPD.  However, up to 85% of cases remain undiagnosed in the community, meaning these people may not get early treatment. There is much uncertainty about how to best identify these missing patients, how COPD progresses, what factors that could be modified (other than smoking) affect the outcomes, and what options for treatment and management are effective in people with milder disease.

This programme grant aims to recruit a large group of COPD patients from primary care who have the full range of disease severity (not just those with more severe disease as in other comparable studies). This will allow researchers to assess (within this programme and in future) new ways to treat and manage people with COPD, including those with early disease, as well as understanding more about their condition and how it develops over time.

Interventions

Active case-finding procedures.