View clinical trials related to Lung Diseases.
Filter by:Textile workers are exposed to various harmful substances during work, including cotton dust, which is the dust present in air during the handling or processing of cotton. Previous research found a link between cotton dust exposure and impaired respiratory health. This study will comprise of administration and workers' training regarding preventive measures for protection against respiratory illnesses. Workers will be provided free, disposable face masks and measures to reduce cotton dust exposure will be introduced at the textile mills. The study would then determine the effectiveness of this intervention on reduction in cotton dust levels in the mills, and improvement in respiratory health of workers. This study would help the cotton textile workers and managers reduce the health hazards of cotton dust exposure and also guide researchers from Pakistan and other low-resource countries towards developing relevant strategies for health protection of these workers.
The fibrotic interstitial lung diseases (fILD) are characterised by lung scarring, distressing breathlessness and poor health-related quality of life. Exertional desaturation (low blood oxygen during exercise) is a hallmark of fILD, occurring in over 50% of patients. It is sometimes treated with ambulatory oxygen therapy (AOT), which involves breathing supplemental oxygen during physical activity. However the absence of clinical trials has given rise to marked variations in policy and practice globally. Even where AOT is available, treatment adherence using the traditional delivery method of cylinder gas is poor. Recently new devices called portable oxygen concentrators (POCs), have become available, which are lighter and more maneuverable than a cylinder. This may enhance adherence and maximize treatment benefits. This trial will determine the clinical benefits and societal costs of AOT for people with fILD and exertional desaturation. A randomised controlled trial with blinding of participants, assessors and clinicians, and an embedded economic evaluation will be conducted. A total of 260 participants with fILD and exertional desaturation will be randomly assigned to use either AOT or air delivered using a POC for 6 months. If this trial demonstrates clinical and economic benefits of AOT then the findings can be rapidly translated into practice.
Exercise therapy is a cornerstone in the management of patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD), and supervised walking exercise three times a week over 12 weeks improves walking ability and quality of life. Despite this, very few patients exercise on a regular basis. The underuse of exercise in COPD patients can partly be explained by discomfort during exercise because it evokes dyspnea, and thereby explain lack of participation in exercise. If the goal is to offer the best medical therapy to these patients, new and effective exercise training methods must be explored and defined since exercise training is an important part of pulmonary rehabilitation. Intention is to study a new training method called sprint interval training (SIT), which consists of high intensity bouts with very short duration. The idea behind SIT is to avoid the dyspnea associated with traditional endurance training, thus maximizing exercise power without excessive discomfort. The investigators will study training adaptations in patients with COPD and compare the results with age-matched controls. It is expected that both COPD-patients and healthy elderly will improve exercise cycle time until exhaustion after SIT training, and also that the improvement will be larger in the healthy group due to higher absolute training intensity.
Breathing retraining has been reported to lead to improvements in dyspnoea and walking distance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. Evidence regarding the effects of such an intervention in ILD patients is though lacking. In view of this, the aims of such a study were to identify whether breathing retraining led to better management of dyspnoea and improved walking distance in ILD patients.
Aim: To investigate if a symptom driven referral for chronic thrombosis in the lungs after acute pulmonary embolism is better than the current approach. Background: A number of patients with chronic thrombosis in the lungs after acute pulmonary embolism have dyspnea and reduced functional capacity without elevated pulmonary arterial pressure at rest (CTED). However, current guidelines for follow-up after acute pulmonary embolism will miss all patients with CTED, as referral for further examination is based on elevated pulmonary arterial pressure on echocardiography. Thus, the prevalence of CTED is unknown. The hypothesis is, that a symptom-driven referral of patients with previous acute pulmonary embolism is more sensitive in diagnosing CTED than the current approach. Methods and materials: Patients diagnosed with acute pulmonary embolism in Region Midt (approx. 350 per year) will be screened for non-recovery or persistent pulmonary embolism related symptoms during their 3-6 months follow up at their local outpatient clinic. If the patient has persistent symptoms they will be referred to a scintigraphy. If CTED is suspected from the scintigraphy, the patient will be referred for full CTED work-up. The investigators expect to screen 300 patients for persistent symptoms with an expected study time of 3 years.
Ventilation heterogeneity is a hallmark feature of most obstructive pulmonary diseases. In particular, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is pathologically and physiologically characterized by small airway destruction and marked airway cellular inflammation, which result in prominent expiratory airflow limitation, air trapping, hyperinflation and abnormal gas exchange. COPD is strongly linked with the exposition to inhaled irritants, most notably tobacco smoke, and is as such a potentially preventable disease. COPD-related morbidity, mortality and social costs are high: in Canada, COPD is the main cause of hospital admission among all chronic diseases and is the fourth leading cause of death. Diagnosis of COPD requires the objective demonstration of expiratory airflow limitation using spirometry. In the right clinical context, a post-bronchodilator forced vital capacity (FVC) / forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) ratio <0.70 is considered indicative of the presence of COPD, and therefore pulmonary function testing is required to make the diagnosis. However, the natural history of COPD represents a slowly-progressive continuum: active smokers that do not meet the criteria for COPD are still at risk of developing the disease. In fact, when compared to healthy non-smokers, active smokers without overt COPD can already show some pathological and clinical features of the disease. Notably, they report increased levels of resting dyspnea, chronic cough, lower exercise capacity, exercise-induced dynamic hyperinflation and marked airway inflammatory cellular infiltration, while conserving normal pulmonary function test values. These findings highlight the negative, clinically-measurable effects of tobacco smoking on pulmonary function, but also the limitations of standard pulmonary function testing in identifying the presence of early, mild airway disease and quantifying physiological limitations in these subjects. As such, there is a need for a novel, simple and reliable method of quantifying airway disease in this population. Quantitative lung ventilation single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) allows an objective quantification of the regional heterogeneity of ventilation in humans. The coefficient of variation (CV) of the distribution of a radioactive tracer, inhaled during the test, allows the generation of heterogeneity maps and density curves of small elements of the lung. These variables are sensitive to the presence of COPD, asthma, air trapping and are correlated to even slight anomalies in pulmonary function testing in otherwise healthy subjects. As such, SPECT could prove useful as an early marker of airway disease in active smokers at risk of developing COPD, but its use in this context has never been formally tested. This pilot study addresses the question of whether lung SPECT could provide clinically relevant information on airway disease in active smokers without overt lung disease on pulmonary lung function testing.
Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) are a heterogeneous collection of more than 100 different pulmonary disorders. Surgical lung biopsie in combination with multidisciplinary discussion is recommend in combination to reach a consensus diagnosis when the initial clinical evaluation is inconclusive in the diagnosis of ILD. Cryobiopsy via bronchoscopy is approved for lung biopsies and allows harvesting of large tissue samples of excellent. This technique is not jet standardized. In this prospective randomised study the investigators want to evaluate the diagnostic yield comparing two different techniques of performing transbronchial cryobiopsy. In this study would be compared a shorter freezing time and more number of biopsies vs a longer freezing time and less number of biopsies.
Physiotherapy will be applied to the patients who undergo thoracotomy operation after 24 hours of intensive care stay. Physiotherapy program includes breathing exercises, incentive spirometer training, ambulation. Oxygen saturation, heart rate and blood pressure values will be recorded before and after the training session. Changes in the follow-up parameters will be discussed.
Patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and scleroderma who develop pulmonary hypertension (PH) do not fit well into the current classification system and treatments for pulmonary hypertension. This study aims to better understand patients with ILD-PH and scleroderma and to determine if treatment with Macitentan is beneficial.
This study is being conducted to determine safety and effectiveness of transplanting lungs from Hepatitis C-positive donors into Hepatitis C-negative patients on the lung transplant waitlist, who will then be treated with appropriate direct-acting antiviral (DAA) after transplantation.