Emphysema Clinical Trials in Canada

The hypothesis is that in patients with emphysema, a high MMP12 sputum and/or blood level correlates with airspace enlargement and with increased sputum Th2 immune biomarkers. Read Less

This is a single centre exploratory study that aims to apply hyperpolarized xenon-129 (129Xe) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods and measurements in individual patients with and without lung disease to better understand lung structure and function and evaluate response to therapy delivered as a part of clinical care. Read Less

Background: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary (COPD) patients are the paradigm of the chronic complex patient. Their follow up can sometimes be difficult and challenging (1). There are patients with recurrent exacerbations that put an enormous burden on health care resources (2). They also have multiple comorbidities (3) that can sometimes make their management difficult. In an attempt to coordinate all these efforts KGH, HDH and Providence Care have numerous essential resources to take care of COPD patients like the nurse navigators, nurse practitioners and the pulmonary rehabilitation program. These programs provide an excellent support to the clinical activity of Respirologists and other health care providers. Rationale: The main rationale for the development of the Kingston COPD cohort is to translate that highly demanding clinical activity in a teaching and research oriented activity that could be used by clinicians, medical students, residents and fellows. Having a guideline complained established protocol in COPD patients that are usually follow at KGH and HDH could help in not only in unified the way COPD patients are seeing (preserving the importance of the personalized approach) but most importantly established a multidimensional (clinical, physiological, radiological, laboratory) database. This could help know not only the results of our clinical activity but also have a long term (\>5yrs) database for clinical research projects in collaboration with national and international research groups. Therefore this proposal is important because it will help translate our busy daily clinical work in a highly productive teaching and research activity. Read Less