Take a look at the Recent articles

COPD: New opportunities for international collaboration

Nick Bosanquet

Imperial College School of Science, Medicine, and Technology, London, Tel: 020 7594 3355; UK

E-mail : bhuvaneswari.bibleraaj@uhsm.nhs.uk

DOI: 10.15761/HPC.1000138

Article
Article Info
Author Info
Figures & Data

Dear Sir,

Our paper on The Effectiveness Gap in COPD was published in 2013 [1]. It showed that COPD had been an increasing problem and that there was a long way to go in filling the gap between best possible outcomes with existing therapies and the actual results. The paper reviewed the care process and results in terms of admission rates to hospital in four older industrial areas, in France Germany, Finland and England. Only in Finland had admissions for COPD been reduced through improved process in primary care. Each primary care centre had a specialist nurse who kept personal contact with high risk patients. Adherence was much improved and numbers on state benefits for long term disability in respiratory disease reduced.

Since then the scale of the challenge has been even more clearly mapped out in country studies. The recent study of prevalence and risk factors for COPD in China showed that the overall prevalence was 8.6% with higher prevalence for men (11.9%) than for women (5.4%) Only 12% or people with COPD reported a that they had a previous pulmonary function test [2]. Another recent paper on 25 year trends in the global burden of disease showed that Ambient PM was already the fifth ranked mortality risk factor worldwide with further increases likely [3].

Japan has already shown that health services can achieve very low levels of hospital admission for COPD and Asthma. OECD data show that Asthma and COPD admissions per 100,000 population were 58.1 in Japan and 242.2 in the OECD [4]. The OECD Report on Quality improvement for Japan comments that “Significant reductions in admission rates for both conditions suggest real improvements in the quality of primary care [5]”.

Japan could contribute to new programmes for international collaboration in improving outcomes in COPD and Asthma. The Salford Lung Study in the UK has shown through its research, in follow up interviews that it is possible to identify high risk patients who need assistance in maintaining adherence [6]. Special programmes for high-risk patients have particular relevance to older industrial areas such as exist across the globe in Japan other parts of Asia, Latin America and Europe. A co-ordinated programme could reduce the global burden of disease and improve patient quality of life which is often very low for COPD patients. This could be an area for new co-operation between Asia and Europe. COPD is also a major cause of early retirement and so better efforts here would help to retain people in a declining adult work force.  We hope that Japan could be a key leader in developing programmes for reducing the effectiveness gap.

References

  1. Bosanquet N, Dean L, Iordachescu I, Sheehy C (2013) The Effectiveness Gap in COPD: a mixed methods international comparative study. Prim Care Respir J 22: 209-213.
  2. Wang. C et al. Prevalence and Risk Factors of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in China (the China Pulmonary Health (CPH) study): a national cross –sectional study. Lancet Respir Med 391: 1706–1717.
  3. Cohen AJ, Brauer M, Burnett R, Anderson HR, Frostad J, et al. (2017) Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015. Lancet 389: 1907-1918. [Crossref]
  4. OECD (2017) Health Policy in Japan.
  5. OECD (2014) Raising Standards, Assessment and Recommendations. OECD Reviews of Health Care Quality p. 11.
  6. Doward L, Svedsater H, Whalley D, Crawford R, Leather D, et al. (2017) Salford Lung Study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. (SLS COPD): follow up interviews on patient-centred outcomes. Primary Care Respiratory Journal 27: 66.

Editorial Information

Editor-in-Chief

Kohei Akazawa
2021 Copyright OAT. All rights reserv Niigata University Medical and Dental Hospital, Japan

Article Type

Letter to Editor

Publication history

Received date: May 17, 2018
Accepted date: May 23, 2018
Published date: May 25, 2018

Copyright

© 2018 Bosanquet N. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation

Bosanquet N (2018) COPD: New opportunities for international collaboration. Health Prim Car 2: DOI: 10.15761/HPC.1000138

Corresponding author

Nick Bosanquet

Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Imperial College School of Science, Medicine, and Technology, London, UK

E-mail : bhuvaneswari.bibleraaj@uhsm.nhs.uk

No Figures