The NICE guidelines on the assessment of chest pain

Asthma control and exacerbations: two different sides of the same coin

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Optimal asthma management includes both the control of asthma symptoms and reducing the risk of future asthma exacerbations. Traditionally, treatment has been adjusted largely on the basis of symptoms and lung function and for many patients, this approach delivers both excellent symptom control and reduced risk. However, the relationship between these two key components of the disease may vary between different asthmatic phenotypes and disease severities and there is increasing recognition of the need for more individualized treatment approaches.

RECENT FINDINGS

A number of factors which predict exacerbation risk have been identified including demographic and behavioural features and specific inflammatory biomarkers. Type-2 cytokine-driven eosinophilic airways inflammation predisposes to frequent exacerbations and predicts response to corticosteroids, and the usefulness of sputum eosinophilia as both a marker of exacerbation risk and biomarker for adjustment of corticosteroid treatment has been established for some time. However, attempts to develop surrogate markers, which would be more straightforward to deliver in the clinic, have been challenging.

SUMMARY

Some patients with asthma have persistent symptoms in the absence of type-2 cytokine driven-eosinophilic airways inflammation due to noncorticosteroid responsive mechanisms (T2-low disease). Composite biomarker strategies using easily measured surrogate indicators of type-2 inflammation (such as fractional exhaled nitric oxide, blood eosinophil count and serum periostin levels) may predict exacerbation risk better but it is unclear if they can be used to adjust corticosteroid treatment. Biomarkers will be used to target novel biologic treatments but additionally may be used to optimize corticosteroid treatment dose and act as prognostics for exacerbation risk and potentially other important longer term asthma outcomes.

Using coronary artery calcification combined with pretest clinical risk assessment as a means of determining investigation and treatment in patients presenting with chest pain in a rural setting

462 patients presenting with chest pain to a rural district general hospital underwent calcium scoring and pretest clinical risk assessment in order to stratify subsequent investigations and treatment was retrospectively reviewed. The patients were followed up for two years and further investigations and outcomes recorded. Of the 206 patients with zero calcium score, 132 patients were immediately discharged from cardiac follow-up with no further investigation on the basis of their calcium score, low pretest risk of coronary artery disease, and no significant incidental findings. After further tests, 267 patients were discharged with no further cardiac therapy, 88 patients were discharged with additional medical therapy, and 19 patients underwent coronary artery by-pass grafting or percutaneous intervention. 164 patients with incidental findings on the chest CT (computed tomography) accompanying calcium scoring were reviewed, of which 88 patients underwent further tests and follow-up for noncardiac causes of chest pain. The correlations between all major risk factors and calcium scores were weak except for a combination of diabetes and hypertension in the male gender (P = 0.012), The use of calcium scoring and pretest risk appeared to reduce the number of unnecessary cardiac investigations in our patients: however, the calcium scoring test produced a high number of incidental findings on the associated CT scans.