Respiratory medicine
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Respiratory medicine · Feb 2015
Multicenter Study Observational StudyReal-life effectiveness of smoking-cessation treatments in general practice clinics in Denmark. The Escape Smoke project.
The smoking prevalence has not decreased in the last years in Denmark. General practice (GP) offers smoking cessation (SC) treatment. Studies of real-life effectiveness of daily practice SC-activities from the GP-setting opposed to efficacy results from randomized clinical trials are few. The study aim was to evaluate the real-life effectiveness of SC-treatments for daily smokers among Danish GP-clinics. ⋯ Smoking cessation in Danish GP-clinics with some prior SC-activity can result in rather high long-term quit rates, especially when combining counseling and prescription-based SC-medicine. The effectiveness of prescription-based SC-medications versus NRT in the general population merits further investigation.
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Respiratory medicine · Feb 2015
Multicenter StudyCharacterisation of the frequent exacerbator phenotype in COPD patients in a large UK primary care population.
The 'frequent exacerbator' is recognised as an important phenotype in COPD. Current understanding about this phenotype comes from prospective longitudinal clinical trials in secondary/tertiary care with little information reported in primary care populations. ⋯ Although COPD exacerbations occur across all grades of disease severity, female patients with high dyspnoea scores, more severely impaired lung function and co-morbidities are at greatest risk. Elderly patients, with severely impaired lung function, high mMRC scores and osteoporosis are associated with experience of severe exacerbations requiring hospitalisation.