Exercise intolerance is one, if not the most, of the deleterious consequences of pulmonary diseases that has a great impact on patients’ quality of life. Moreover, exercise tolerance is independently related to mayor outcomes such as survival, rate of hospital admissions and overall cost of pulmonary diseases such as COPD. Thus, because exercise tolerance is an important outcome and its assessment, while complex, will result in a better management of patients. Moreover, measuring exercise tolerance is becoming a very relevant issue for both medical practice and in clinical trials.
Hospital Acquired Pneumonia (HAP) and Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) are the second intrahospital infection carrying a very high morbidity, mortality, and sanitary costs. In the last 5 years a lot of information has been released in the literature as regards ethiopathogenesis, etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these entities. This new information could motivate changes in clinical practice.
Functional evaluation of airway and lung function is still dominated by traditional tests like spirometry, single or multiple breath wash-in/washout and lung diffusion. During the last years, however, a large amount of evidence has been produced regarding the use of alternative approaches for a more complete understanding of lung and airways function in health and diseases.
PCD is a rare inherited disorder of ciliary function resulting in impaired mucociliary clearance. Symptoms include progressive supportive pulmonary disease, chronic rhino-sinusitis, hearing problems and infertility.
This ERS task force will aim to produce European guidelines and standards of care for the diagnosis, investigation, management and follow-up of adult non-CFBE
In 2005 the ATS/ERS task force on standardisation of lung function testing published the document: Standardisation of the single-breath determination of carbon monoxide uptake in the lung.
Previously considered as a rare tumor, malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) has become a very important public health issue. MPM is a tumor with a poor survival and its diagnosis may be difficult because of differential diagnosis such as pleural benign disease induced by asbestos exposure or pleural metastasis of adenocarcinoma. Management of patients with MPM also remains complicated because they are often referred for evaluation late in the evolution of the disease. The aim of this Task Force is therefore to provide clinicians with new concise, up-to-dated clinical practice guidelines on management of MPM.
This Task Force aims to develop a clinical practice guideline based upon a high-level systematic review on various aspects of quality in thoracic oncology care. This document intends to complete the previous narrative literature search developed by the ERS that showed little high-level evidence in this field of interest. The representation of all relevant professions/disciplines in the thoracic oncology care trajectory as well as active patient involvement are fundamental elements of the project concept.
The ERS regards the production of a statement on harmonized standards for centres of care and cancer registration in thoracic oncology in Europe as essential for future quality improvement projects.
Asthma is still characterized by preventable morbidity and mortality, which is enhanced by poor adherence to international asthma guidelines. This task force will have two axons:
Interpreting pulmonary function test (PFT) requires accurate reference ranges to help distinguish between health and disease and assess the severity and nature of any functional impairment.