Bronchiectasis Awareness Gaps Persist: Marc A. Sala, MD

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Bronchiectasis, as a disease, is not common knowledge among the general public, creating a gap for clinicians and policymakers to fill in terms of spreading awareness and for scientists in diversifying pulmonology research.

In Chicago, a Population Health Roundtable, hosted by The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®), aimed to address these gaps by consulting a group of clinicians specializing in pulmonology to discuss ways their institutions or practices have helped target the issues at hand.

There is still room to grow in all areas of care regarding pulmonary diseases, Marc A. Sala, MD, moderator and associate professor of medicine (pulmonary and critical care) at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said in an interview with AJMC.

"I think that when it comes to bronchiectasis, it's certainly been understudied, and definitely I think we've not advocated enough for it when it comes to people being educated about what it is in the general public," he said.

Yet, similar to other pulmonary diseases, factors like preexisting conditions and exacerbations are both considered when adapting care strategies for each patient. Sala also mentions frequency and symptom burden as a few clinical biomarkers accounted for when tailoring treatment strategies and mapping a patient's care trajectory.

"And a lot of these features, to me, especially when someone has, let's say, incidentally discovered bronchiectasis, they have it on a CT [computed tomography] scan that was done for other reasons," Sala said. "All of these factors help me understand how aggressive we need to be with their care, in determining what level of management they need and how much they need to worry about the condition in the future."

Communicating patients' needs across inter-specialties once comorbidities have been factored into a patient's care plan is all the more important when they're in-house.

"In terms of making sure that there's good communication between the outpatient, continuity doctor, continuity pulmonologist, and then the inpatient consult pulmonary team, is paramount," he said.