Miranda Kirby1, Keishi Ohtani2,3, Rosa Maria Lopez Lisbona3,4, Anthony M.D. Lee3, Wei Zhang3,5, Pierre Lane3, Nina Varfolomeva6, Linda Hui6, Diana Ionescu7, Harvey O. Coxson1, Calum MacAulay3, J. Mark FitzGerald6 and Stephen Lam3,6⇑
+Author Affiliations
- 1Centre for Heart Lung Innovation, University of British Columbia and St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2Department of Surgery, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan 3Imaging Unit, Integrative Oncology Department, British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada 4Department of Respirology, Bellvitge University Hospital, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain 5Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China 6Institute for Heart and Lung Health, University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada 7Department of Pathology, British Columbia Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Stephen Lam, British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, 675 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Z 1L3, Canada. E-mail: slam2@bccancer.bc.ca
Extract
Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is a novel, nonpharmacological procedure for treatment of severe asthma. Recently, the Asthma Intervention Research 2 clinical trial demonstrated asthmatics had fewer hospitalisations following BT, which persisted 5 years after therapy [1]. However, it is well recognised that asthma is a heterogeneous disease with distinct asthma phenotypes and, not surprisingly, not all asthmatics in that trial benefited from BT [2].