“An estimated 70% of people with COPD and asthma go undiagnosed. Tools like this can help find these people, and get them the treatment they need.” -Dr. Shawn AaronA team led by Dr. Shawn Aaron developed and validated a tool published in the European Respiratory Journal that can detect undiagnosed asthma and COPD in adults with symptoms. Individuals identified as high-risk by the 13-item questionnaire need to ask their care provider for a spirometry test to confirm the diagnosis.
To develop the tool, the research team used random digit dialing at 16 sites across Canada to enroll people who had never been diagnosed with a lung disease, but had respiratory symptoms like shortness of breath, wheezing, increased mucus, or prolonged cough in the past six months. The participants completed existing questionnaires for asthma and COPD, and those eligible had spirometry tests done to confirm diagnosis.
Of 1,615 participants, 12% had COPD and 8.4% had asthma. The team used data from this group to create their questionnaire, then validated it with a new set of 471 participants. This is the first screening questionnaire to include both asthma and COPD, which have similar symptoms. It’s also more sensitive at detecting undiagnosed cases than existing tools.
“An estimated 70% of people with COPD and asthma go undiagnosed. Tools like this can help find these people, and get them the treatment they need.” said Dr. Shawn Aaron, senior scientist and respirologist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.
Authors: Chau Huynh, G. A. Whitmore, Katherine L. Vandemheen, J. Mark FitzGerald, Celine Bergeron, Louis-Philippe Boulet, Andreanne Cote, Stephen K. Field, Erika Penz, R. Andrew McIvor, Catherine Lemière, Samir Gupta, Irvin Mayers, Mohit Bhutani, Paul Hernandez, M. Diane Lougheed, Christopher J. Licskai, Tanweer Azher, Martha Ainslie, Ian Fraser, Masoud Mahdavian, Gonzalo G. Alvarez, Tetyana Kendzerska, Shawn D. Aaron
Funding: This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. All research at The Ottawa Hospital is also enabled by generous donations to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
Core Resources: Ottawa Methods Centre
The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health, research and learning hospital proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa and supported by The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
