Beyond bronchial thermoplasty - where to now?
expert_opinion · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39810934.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.103017 and PMC identifier 11731591.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
With the impending 'retirement' of bronchial thermoplasty (BT) for the treatment of patients with asthma, there is much to learn from this real-world experiment that will help us develop more effective future therapies with the same primary target i.e., airway smooth muscle (ASM) remodelling. This viewpoint discusses initial controversy surrounding BT (lack of an effect on forced expiratory volume in 1 s), its underutilisation, and importantly how non-standard diagnostics successfully demonstrated therapeutic response which escaped traditional lung function metrics. It is anticipated that the next iteration of BT (likely in a drug form) will have an overall greater effect on the health care system by virtue of evoking ASM remodelling as a treatable trait, and after appropriately drawing on lessons learned from the ∼fifteen-year BT saga.