How do clinical trials on COPD exacerbations evaluate the effect treatments have on patients?

What is it about?

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a burdensome, long-term lung disease, causing persistent respiratory symptoms and loss of quality of life. It is frequent, affecting more than 10% of people aged >40. Acute exacerbations are symptom flare-ups causing poor health and they are responsible for 1:8 hospital admissions. The design and the way we carry out clinical trials evaluating how to treat COPD exacerbations is challenging. Researchers do their studies in very different ways, thus rendering the study results incomparable. This complicates the translation of research findings into clinical practice. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the outcome measures used to test the safety and effectiveness of different interventions (treatments) for COPD exacerbations. We identified 123 clinical trials and 38 systematic reviews published during the last decade, which revealed significant variability in how these studies were done. The outcome measures that were assessed differed from one study to another, limiting their comparability. Consequently, there is a need to agree on a group of important outcome measures that will be evaluated as a minimum in all future clinical trials on COPD exacerbations management.

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Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Comparability of controlled clinical trials evaluating the management of COPD exacerbations is limited by heterogeneity in their study design. Standardisation of the outcome measures would help researchers to compare, contrast and synthesise them.