ERS International Congress 2022: highlights from the Respiratory Clinical Care and Physiology Assembly.

It is a challenge to keep abreast of all the clinical and scientific advances in the field of respiratory medicine. This article contains an overview of the laboratory-based science, clinical trials and qualitative research that were presented during the 2022 European Respiratory Society International Congress within the sessions from the five groups of Assembly 1 (Respiratory Clinical Care and Physiology). Selected presentations are summarised from a wide range of topics: clinical problems, rehabilitation and chronic care, general practice and primary care, mobile/electronic health (m-health/e-health), clinical respiratory physiology, exercise and functional imaging.

Telemedicine and home monitoring for COPD - a narrative review of recent literature.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Home monitoring is one of the methods of using telemedical technologies aimed to provide care at home and maintain a connection between patients and healthcare providers. The purpose of this review is to describe recent advancements in the use of home monitoring for the care and management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent studies focused on remote monitoring for patients with COPD proved the positive effect of home monitoring interventions on the frequency of exacerbations and unscheduled healthcare visits, duration of patients' physical activity, proved sensitivity and overall specificity of such interventions and highlighted the effectiveness of self-management.Assessing end-user experience revealed high satisfaction levels among patients and healthcare staff who used home monitoring interventions. The majority of physicians and staff responded positively about the interventions' facilitation of communication with patients. Moreover, healthcare staff considered such technologies useful for their practice. SUMMARY: Home monitoring for COPD patients improves medical care and disease management despite minor drawbacks and obstacles to its wide implementation. Involving end-users in evaluating and co-creating new telemonitoring interventions has the potential to improve the quality of remote monitoring for COPD patients in the near future.

Collaboration between explainable artificial intelligence and pulmonologists improves the accuracy of pulmonary function test interpretation.

BACKGROUND: Few studies have investigated the collaborative potential between artificial intelligence (AI) and pulmonologists for diagnosing pulmonary disease. We hypothesised that the collaboration between a pulmonologist and AI with explanations (explainable AI (XAI)) is superior in diagnostic interpretation of pulmonary function tests (PFTs) than the pulmonologist without support. METHODS: The study was conducted in two phases, a monocentre study (phase 1) and a multicentre intervention study (phase 2). Each phase utilised two different sets of 24 PFT reports of patients with a clinically validated gold standard diagnosis. Each PFT was interpreted without (control) and with XAI's suggestions (intervention). Pulmonologists provided a differential diagnosis consisting of a preferential diagnosis and optionally up to three additional diagnoses. The primary end-point compared accuracy of preferential and additional diagnoses between control and intervention. Secondary end-points were the number of diagnoses in differential diagnosis, diagnostic confidence and inter-rater agreement. We also analysed how XAI influenced pulmonologists' decisions. RESULTS: In phase 1 (n=16 pulmonologists), mean preferential and differential diagnostic accuracy significantly increased by 10.4% and 9.4%, respectively, between control and intervention (p<0.001). Improvements were somewhat lower but highly significant (p<0.0001) in phase 2 (5.4% and 8.7%, respectively; n=62 pulmonologists). In both phases, the number of diagnoses in the differential diagnosis did not reduce, but diagnostic confidence and inter-rater agreement significantly increased during intervention. Pulmonologists updated their decisions with XAI's feedback and consistently improved their baseline performance if AI provided correct predictions. CONCLUSION: A collaboration between a pulmonologist and XAI is better at interpreting PFTs than individual pulmonologists reading without XAI support or XAI alone.

Harbingers of Hope: Scientists and the Pursuit of World Peace.

The ongoing wars in many regions-such as the conflict between Israel and Hamas-as well as the effects of war on communities, social services, and mental health are covered in this special editorial. This article emphasizes the need for international efforts to promote peace, offer humanitarian aid, and address the mental health challenges faced by individuals and communities affected by war and violence.

Telemedicine and virtual respiratory care in the era of COVID-19.

The World Health Organization defines telemedicine as "an interaction between a healthcare provider and a patient when the two are separated by distance". The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has forced a dramatic shift to telephone and video consulting for follow-up and routine ambulatory care for reasons of infection control. Short message service ("text") messaging has proved a useful adjunct to remote consulting, allowing the transfer of photographs and documents. Maintaining the care of noncommunicable diseases is a core component of pandemic preparedness and telemedicine has developed to enable (for example) remote monitoring of sleep apnoea, telemonitoring of COPD, digital support for asthma self-management and remote delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation. There are multiple exemplars of telehealth instigated rapidly to provide care for people with COVID-19, to manage the spread of the pandemic or to maintain safe routine diagnostic or treatment services. Despite many positive examples of equivalent functionality and safety, there remain questions about the impact of remote delivery of care on rapport and the longer term impact on patient/professional relationships. Although telehealth has the potential to contribute to universal health coverage by providing cost-effective accessible care, there is a risk of increasing social health inequalities if the "digital divide" excludes those most in need of care. As we emerge from the pandemic, the balance of remote versus face-to-face consulting, and the specific role of digital health in different clinical and healthcare contexts will evolve. What is clear is that telemedicine in one form or another will be part of the "new norm".

ERS International Congress 2021: highlights from the Respiratory Clinical Care and Physiology Assembly.

It is a challenge to keep abreast of all the clinical and scientific advances in the field of respiratory medicine. This article contains an overview of laboratory-based science, randomised controlled trials and qualitative research that were presented during the 2021 European Respiratory Society International Congress within the sessions from the five groups of the Assembly 1 - Respiratory clinical care and physiology. Selected presentations are summarised from a wide range of topics: clinical problems, rehabilitation and chronic care, general practice and primary care, electronic/mobile health (e-health/m-health), clinical respiratory physiology, exercise and functional imaging.

Factors associated with physical activity among COPD patients with mild or moderate airflow obstruction.

Physical inactivity is already present among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) of mild or moderate airflow obstruction. Most previous studies that reported on determinants of physical activity in COPD included patients with severe COPD. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore which patient characteristics were related with physical activity in COPD patients with mild or moderate airflow obstruction. Cross-sectional analyses were performed on patients selected from the population-based Netherlands Epidemiology of Obesity study. Patients were included if they had a physician-diagnosed COPD GOLD 0-2 or had newly diagnosed COPD GOLD 1-2. Physical activity was evaluated using the Short Questionnaire to Assess Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (SQUASH) questionnaire and reported in hours per week of metabolic equivalents (MET-h/week). Associations between sociodemographic, lifestyle, clinical and functional characteristics were examined using regression analysis. 323 patients were included in research (77 with physician-diagnosed and 246 with newly diagnosed COPD). We found that physical activity was positively associated with pulmonary function: FEV1 (regression coefficient 0.40 (95% CI 0.09,0.71)) and FVC (regression coefficient 0.34 (95% CI 0.06,0.61)). Physical activity was associated with anxiety (regression coefficient =0.9 (95% CI 0.3,1.6)) only for physician-diagnosed patients. Lung function and anxiety level determine level of physical activity among COPD patients with mild or moderate airflow obstruction. Thus, integrating it into the physical activity plans could help to increase physical activity level of the patients.

ERS International Congress 2020: highlights from the General Pneumology Assembly.

The European Respiratory Society (ERS) accepted 4062 abstracts for presentation at the ERS International Congress in 2020. Although the conference was held virtually, making it possible to replay presentations, it remains a challenge to keep abreast of all the clinical and scientific advances. Therefore, this article provides highlights from the General Pneumology Assembly. Selected presentations from rehabilitation and chronic care, general practice and primary care, and electronic/mobile health (e-health/m-health) are summarised. The highlights incorporate novel findings from laboratory-based science, randomised controlled trials and qualitative research together with insights from newly available clinical guidelines.

ERS International Congress, Madrid, 2019: highlights from the General Pneumology Assembly.

This article contains highlights and a selection of the scientific advances from the European Respiratory Society's General Pneumology Assembly that were presented at the 2019 European Respiratory Society International Congress in Madrid, Spain. The most relevant topics from the different groups will be discussed, covering a wide range of areas including rehabilitation and chronic care, general practice and primary care and M-health and E-health. In this review, the newest research and actual data as well as award-winning abstracts and highlight sessions will be discussed.

Implementation of digital health interventions in respiratory medicine: a call to action by the European Respiratory Society m-Health/e-Health Group.

An action plan prepared by @EuroRespSoc Group 01.04 (m-health/e-health) concerning the implementation of digital health interventions in respiratory medicine http://bit.ly/2JeEuox.

Interstitial lung disease: course report.

The @EuroRespSoc course on ILD https://bit.ly/32PtzfH.

Scope and new horizons for implementation of m-Health/e-Health services in pulmonology in 2019.

The reason for this review based on the results of many meta- analyses is the great assessed difference in the methods of most studies in e-Health, telemedicine and tele-rehabilitation. It consists of different understanding of new terms, using different hard- and software, including criteria, different methodology of patient's treatment and its evaluation. This status suggests that first of all m-Health/e-Health requires a unique ontology of terms using and methodology of studies comparing. In this review we try to describe shortly the most significant points of modern e-Health field of medicine. The basic parts include methodology of review formation, tele-communication implementation results, tele-education, interactive questioning, tele-consultation, telemedicine diagnosis, tele-monitoring, rehabilitation and tele-rehabilitation, gamification, acceptability of mobile electronic devices and software in e-Health and planning studies. At the end of the review the new ontological structure of digital medicine is presented.

Exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases as a risk factor of the skeletal muscle dysfunction.

BACKGROUND: Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) contributes to increased systemic inflammation, oxidative stress, hypoxia, hypercapnia and other risk factors of the skeletal muscle dysfunction. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to determine whether the frequency of the COPD exacerbations promotes deterioration of the skeletal muscle dysfunction in patients with COPD and to figure out which characteristics of the muscles will reflect this changes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We examined 98 male COPD patients, mean age 60.4±11.2 years, GOLD groups B, C, D. To assess the degree of skeletal muscle dysfunction we used hand-grip strength, 6-minute walk test, bioelectrical impedance analysis. Quality of life was evaluated using St. George's respiratory questionnaire (SGRQ). RESULTS: Increase in the frequency of COPD exacerbations was associated with the decrease in the 6-minute walk test distance (r= -0.214, P = 0.034) and with the rise of sarcopenia according to the results of bioelectrical impedance analysis - lower fat-free mass index (r = -0.201, P = 0.047). Frequency of COPD exacerbations had a weak correlation with the degree of the activity limitation component of SGRQ (r = 0.436, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: COPD exacerbation plays an important role in progression of the skeletal muscle dysfunction. It decreases endurance of the skeletal muscles, diminishing their size, which manifests itself in reduced exercise tolerance. Increase in the frequency of the COPD exacerbations also worsens all components of the life quality.

Clinical exercise testing: basic principles and practice.

Faculty and delegates of an @ERStalk course on clinical exercise testing describe their experiences http://ow.ly/dPwB30dxr8v.