The group focused on this agenda is called the COPD Case Finding Consortium; it is funded by the NIH and includes organizations and institutions such as the University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Kentucky, United BioSource and the COPD Foundation.

“COPD is under-diagnosed in the United States… and we’re attempting to improve the diagnosis of COPD, and identify individuals in the healthcare system that will significantly benefit from current and future therapeutic options,” explains Fernando J. Martinez, M.D., Principal Investigator for the Consortium and Professor in the Department of Medicine and Director of Pulmonary Diagnostic Services in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Department at the University of Michigan.

In the coming year, the Consortium will develop important questions that need to be asked in a simple fashion to individuals to aid in properly identifying COPD patients.

“We need a sense of what minimum number of questions are required and how a simple lung function measure will affect these. We’re excited about this aggressive campaign for COPD screening and identification. In the next couple of years we’ll improve the ability to diagnose patients with COPD in the community,” Dr. Martinez says. “COPD is acknowledged by the NIH as one of the key health care problems that needs to be addressed in the United States and they’ve made a very concerted effort on multiple fronts to enhance research to better understand the biology of the disease, why it varies from patient to patient, and how to increase diagnosis.”

The Consortium’s beginning came out of a 2009 COPD Foundation/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute workshop, whose purpose was to review the status of case finding instruments of COPD.

Four recommendations came from that meeting:
• There is an urgent need to develop and test a strategy for COPD case-finding in the United States.
• Case-finding efforts in the United States should especially target those with moderateto- severe COPD, specifically those with FEV1
• COPD case-finding strategies should employ a three-stage algorithm consisting of 1) a risk factor/symptom questionnaire designed to eliminate those unlikely to have severe disease; 2) a simple measure of expiratory airflow capable of excluding those with normal or nearly normal pulmonary function; and 3) appropriate diagnostic evaluation, including physician appraisal, consideration of alternative diagnoses, and post-bronchodilator spirometry, performed with rigorous quality control.
• Research is needed to optimize and validate the case-finding strategies described in the above recommendations.

After this workshop, the COPD Foundation began its Mobile Spirometry Unit (MSU) that traveled, and still travels, around the United States, attending health fairs and giving free COPD screenings. To date, the MSU has screened over 90,000 people to determine if they are at risk for COPD.

Currently, the Consortium is conducting multi-faceted reviews of available literature and instruments and review data sets.