Colleagues from CHEST and the American Thoracic Society (ATS) will come together for a joint session on bronchiectasis at CHEST 2023 in Honolulu.
ATS/CHEST Session: Advances in Bronchiectasis 2023, on Monday, from 7:15 am to 8:15 am, in Room 323C at the convention center, will take a closer look at the condition, which is growing in prevalence. Bronchiectasis occurs when airways are damaged by infection or injury, and it results in irreversible airway dilation and bronchial wall thickening.
The session is a follow-up to a joint symposium on the same topic earlier this year at the ATS 2023 International Conference in Washington, DC. At CHEST 2023, expert faculty will share presentations on the diagnostic evaluation of bronchiectasis, phenotyping bronchiectasis, therapeutics that target bronchiectasis, and the management of multidrug-resistant infections.
“There is a lot of activity in this field. This session will provide updates on some of the studies that have come out since we presented in May,” said Session Co-Chair and CHEST President, Doreen J. Addrizzo-Harris, MD, FCCP.
Other presenters include Session Co-Chair, Shannon Kasperbauer, MD, Infectious Disease Physician and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Mycobacterial and Respiratory Infections at National Jewish Health; Pamela McShane, MD, FCCP, from University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler; Charles Daley, MD, FCCP, from University of California, San Francisco; James Chalmers, MBChB, PhD, from Scottish Centre for Respiratory Research, Dundee, United Kingdom; and Marcos Restrepo, MD, PhD, FCCP, from University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Dr. Addrizzo-Harris said the joint session format allows faculty from both organizations to collaborate and educate attendees about a condition that is affecting more and more patients.
“And given that one meeting was in Washington, DC, and this one is in Hawaiʻi, we felt we could reach a large audience on this very important topic that has experienced a remarkable increase in the number of patients with this diagnosis over the last several years,” she said. “There are several new therapies, and we want to provide updates.”
Dr. Addrizzo-Harris hopes the session will help clinicians better recognize bronchiectasis in patients with chronic cough. Often, those individuals go years without a diagnosis or are misdiagnosed with asthma or COPD.
“I also hope that we will be more optimistic in treating these patients, as we now recognize much more research is being done in this area; and, with that, more treatments will be available in the near future,” she said.
Screening, awareness of underlying causes of bronchiectasis, and promising new antiinflammatory agents will also be part of the discussion.
“This partnership offers a great opportunity to expand everybody’s knowledge,” Dr. Addrizzo-Harris said.