Breathing is something most of us don’t think about on a daily basis, unless you are one of the 35 million Americans living with chronic lung disease. Geoffrey McLennan, MD, PhD, professor of internal medicine and bioengineering at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, talks about keeping our lungs healthy and the opportunity to participate in studies of the lung:
What are some of the primary causes of lung disease?
The most common cause of lung disease is cigarette smoking—exposure to cigarette smoke. That causes irreparable damage to the lung over many years of exposure. Other common causes are infections and such things as pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, those sort of things, as well.
Who is generally affected by lung disease? More women or men? At what age?
The very sad thing is women are now smoking about as much as men—or, in fact, a little more—and they’ve caught up with lung disease. So many of the lung diseases were almost exclusively in men; now they’re about equal because of the impact of women smoking. There are, of course, children with lung diseases such as asthma, that sort of thing. And then in the middle years, 20 to 30 or 40, asthma is probably the most common lung disease people have. But after the age of about 40, you start to get into things like lung cancer, severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—both of which are due to smoking.
Are there ways to prevent lung disease in some cases?
Our bodies have to last a long time, we hope to live a good 100 years, if we can. And we probably could if we looked after it well. We should avoid pollution. So cigarette smoking, we should not do it, or if we’re doing it, we should stop. We should also not be exposed to polluted air because our lungs are quite sensitive to that. And then there’s a whole series of vaccinations people can have—particularly the very young, and then again the very older people who can get vaccinated—against pneumonia and influenza, and that’s very helpful, as well.
At UI Hospitals and Clinics, you are principal investigator of a couple of large studies on the lung. Let’s spend a couple of minutes talking about those. What is the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial?
That’s a study that’s aimed at people who have been smoking for a number of years. And we’re trying to see if we do CT scans of the chest, whether we can detect lung cancer at an early stage and whether that detection actually translates into a better survival. So we’re very interested in the concept of early screening with CT scanning. But whether it makes a difference to survival is a very important question. So that’s what the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial is setting out to do.
What will participants do as part of the trial?
People in the study will get a CT scan of their lungs every year for three years, and that’s to detect any cancer they might have had at the outset of the study or any interval cancers that occur during the study time. And then after that period of time, we follow people for about five years to see whether or not they get any further lung cancers or if they get lung cancer, what their survival will be. That study’s been already going for about four or five years now and has a couple of years to go before we get to see the answers from that study.
Now, can you tell us more about the EASE Trial?
The EASE Trial is a pretty novel therapy. We use a small device we implant into the lung with a bronchoscope. This is targeted toward people who have severe emphysema. Emphysema is usually caused by smoking, but can be very debilitating to people as well. So using this device, we create new air tubes in their lungs so that instead of just breathing through their existing air tubes that are now diseased with the emphysema, we create some new ones so that they can potentially breathe easier.
Who is eligible to participate in this project?
This study is currently open for patients or people subjects with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or another term for that is COPD or another term is emphysema). And that’s now currently open for patients to participate.
What will trial participants be asked to do as part of this study?
We evaluate them quite intensely for the study and we evaluate their lungs to see if they meet criteria for eligibility. And if they do, then we use a bronchoscope to put ? down into their lung. It’s done with them asleep so they don’t feel anything. But working basically through their mouth, we work in their lung to create these new air tubes. And then they wake up and go home and we follow them along and see how they’re doing.
Where can people get more information on either of the studies call?
Call into the Pulmonary Division, 319-356-3603, and we can help them with how to get further information. |
