touchRESPIRATORY were delighted to speak with a valued member of our Editorial Board for touchREVIEWS in Respiratory & Pulmonary Diseases, Dr Ronald Strauss (Case Western Reserve University; Cleveland Allergy and Asthma Center, Cleveland, OH, USA), about the areas in the field of respiratory medicine that he is most looking forward to exploring in 2023.
Questions
- What areas in the field of respiratory medicine are you most looking forward to exploring in 2023? (0:22)
Disclosures: Ronald Strauss has nothing to disclose in relation to this video.
Support: Interview and filming supported by Touch Medical Media Ltd. Interview conducted by Atiya Henry.
Filmed in coverage of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting 2023.
Transcript:
Hi, this is Dr Ronald Strauss. I’m a Clinical Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve and in private practice running the Cleveland Allergy and Asthma Center, which specializes in taking care of severe asthmatics.
What areas in the field of respiratory medicine are you most looking forward to exploring in 2023? (0:22)
We will continue to follow our patients that are being treated with mepolizumab and see if they continue to do as well and follow their pulmonary function tests. Specifically as mentioned, FEV1 with little change in FEV 25-75 with significant changes. The two specific areas I’m interested in working on is the use of terbutaline, which was very popular 40 years ago. When you went to an emergency room, you got adrenaline or epinephrine or terbutaline. We have found, considering the severity of the asthmatics we deal with, that patients who are already on inhaled corticosteroid, long acting beta agonists, have had five aerosols with albuterol and have already started prednisone, when they go to the emergency room locally, nationally and internationally they get a couple of aerosols and then they get admitted. We have found that the use of terbutaline has kept many patients out of the hospital, so it’s very difficult as a private practitioner to do a controlled study, but I would like to certainly pursue that further. The other area I’m very interested in is cough variant asthma. These are asthmatics that never wheeze, and they have an intermittent or chronic cough particularly precipitated by a viral infection. They visit their physician and the chest is absolutely clear in their diagnosis, bronchitis. They go home with an antibiotic, which doesn’t work, and then they get a second and a third. We can show that it’s an asthmatic by using what’s called the methacholine challenge. This test is very effective in showing they have asthma or a reactive airway disease. So, we have followed a number of patients and the results are very exciting because we treat them just like an asthmatic – with inhaled corticosteroids, long acting beta agonists and prednisone if needed. So this is something I think the lay population as well as the medical population, needs to become more aware of. We will study these patients with pulmonary function tests and their response to medication.
Subtitles and transcript are autogenerated
