The Journal of clinical investigation
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Airway fractal dimension predicts respiratory morbidity and mortality in COPD.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by airway remodeling. Characterization of airway changes on computed tomography has been challenging due to the complexity of the recurring branching patterns, and this can be better measured using fractal dimensions. ⋯ Airway fractal dimension as a measure of airway branching complexity and remodeling in smokers is associated with respiratory morbidity and lung function change, offers prognostic information additional to traditional CT measures of airway wall thickness, and can be used to estimate mortality risk.
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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is extremely heterogenous in its effects on airway remodeling. Parsing the complex and interrelated morphologic changes and understanding their contribution to disease severity has posed a significant challenge to the field. ⋯ They found that lower AFD was independently associated with disease severity and mortality in COPD. This work highlights AFD as a noninvasive approach to analyze complex changes in airway geometry.