The outcomes of this conference directly affect the COPD community as a whole because it is where researchers and industry present new data and conversations about diseases such as COPD drive future research, clinical studies and perhaps the development of new drugs.

“It’s the largest meeting of its kind for the pulmonary community—these are the guys that drive COPD care. You have every academic pulmonologist in the country in one spot talking, and that’s a marvelous thing,” says Imre Noth, M.D., member of the COPD Foundation’s Clinical Advisory Committee (CAC) and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. “New ideas about data are presented and people get a chance to show their stuff. It’s phenomenal from a research standpoint, but also (for) the clinical outcomes and translational (bench research) and bench to bedside standpoint.”

Some of the many COPD-related presentations made at the 2012 ATS Conference included: “Pharmacological treatment of COPD—Old and New,” “New Insights into COPD Treatment,” “COPD Comorbidities: Expanding the Horizons,” “Advances in Asthma and COPD Screening and Monitoring, “COPD Biomarkers,” and “Genetic Studies in COPD.”

Neil Schachter, M.D., Chair of CAC and Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and Community Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Medical Director of the Respiratory Care Department of the Mount Sinai Medical Center, also attended the ATS Conference this year.

“It gives doctors a chance to hear about some of the most recent innovations and discoveries in the fields they deal with. If you have a busy practice you don’t always have time to keep up with literature and what’s being done; this is a chance to catch up, to find out new things and learn what you don’t know,” Dr. Schachter says. “The ATS (Conference) is divided into many different interest groups, creating a broad spectrum of findings and useful information at the meeting.

“The COPD Foundation’s Clinical Advisory and Medical and Scientific Advisory (MASAC) committees are able to meet here and review, while learning about all the political and organizational efforts going on in the field—not just in medicine but in how things are being run and administered and what some solutions may be,” Dr. Schachter says.

Paul Simonelli, M.D., Ph.D., CAC member and Director of Thoracic Medicine at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, says the conference serves as an advocate for public respiratory health.

“The ATS (Conference) not only covers the latest updates in clinical aspects of medicine, but it provides an important place for people to talk about new science,” he says. “It gives people the opportunity to learn about aspects of pulmonary medicine in the context of the rest of medicine. It’s an opportunity to give a global sense of what happens when people have lung disease.”