Respiratory Support in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Patients

By 2020, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is expected to be the 3rd leading cause of death in the world, especially in countries of middle to high income, like EU. Despite the improvements in survival by using acute non- invasive ventilation (NIV) to treat patients with exacerbations of COPD complicated by acute hypercapnic respiratory failure (AHRF), these patients are at high risk of re-admission and further life-threatening events. Furthermore, in a recent study of 110 patients who had AHRF (RESCUE study, Struik, Thorax 2014), at one year after discharge 65% had another life-threatening event, and 49% had died. New recent data suggests that NIV at home can reduce re-admissions (HMV-LTOT, Murphy, JAMA 2017), but in a small proportion of patients, and with a high level of expertise. There is an urgent need to develop strategies to reduce the number and severity of exacerbations of COPD. With healthcare objectives and budget constraints, telemonitoring of COPD patients is an important challenge in most European countries. RESCUE2-Monitor is the next step. This European trial (currently, France, Spain and Portugal) will test the hypothesis that home NIV, with a highly adapted ventilatory strategy (hereafter referred to as 'TARGETED VENTILATION'), compared to no home NIV (only hospital NIV), to non-targeted home NIV or to rescue home NIV will reduce re-admission to hospital or death in COPD patients, is possible using e-medicine, and will reduce costs of health.