This past Friday, a hundred specialists met at the Palace of Colomina in Valencia on the occasion of the VI Conference on Respiratory Pathology organized by the Valencian Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG Valencia). The main objective of the meeting was to expose the latest updates and novelties of the guides of asthma and EPOC.
One of the conclusions reached was that near the 30 percent of patients who attend consultations Primary Care have symptoms or diseases respiratory. Thus, it is necessary for Family Physicians to update their knowledge in these pathologies.
The asthma has become one of the diseases more relevantaffecting 5 percent of the population and approximately 10 or 12 percent of children, and in whose treatment around 2 percent of the resources of the public healthcare.
Another pathology that is frequently observed in consultations of the first level of care is the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which affects 10.2 percent of the general population between 40 and 80 years old, presenting a high morbidity and mortality and a high rate of infradiagnóstico.
Four workshops to understand and treat the two diseases
Enrolled specialists participated in a total of four workshops dedicated to these two diseases. Specifically, the one entitled ‘Kaleidoscope of COPD treatment’ was given by the specialist Jose Miguel Valero Perez; the workshop on comorbidities and treatable features of COPD was given by the Family Physician Mario Barcena Caamano; while asthma comorbidities were borne by Fernando Albiñana Fernández and the workshop entitled ‘Asthma control tool’ by the doctor Manuel Nino Camacho.
As was revealed during the conference, COPD is a pathology that presents a high prevalence in the Spanish population (11.8 percent) and a high tasa de infradiagnóstico (74.7 pot percent) according to data from the Episcan II study. On the other hand, the diagnosis is complicated because a spirometry with bronchodilator testwhich is sometimes complex for patients to perform properly.
Regarding the need for a screening in respiratory pathologies so frequent, such as COPD, the organizers of the conference affirm that “it is important to arrive in early stages of the disease because that is when we can really do much more for our patients when it comes to preserving their lung function, quality of life, motivation to quit smoking and performing early interventions in exacerbations”. To achieve this, doctors have at their disposal tools for screening in patients with a smoking habit, such as the COPD-6 and COPD-PS device.
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