Domiciliary Monitoring to Predict Exacerbations of COPD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Domiciliary Monitoring to Predict Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
IRAS ID
201527
Contact name
John Hurst
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2016/04/23, UCL Data protection for health research
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common, long term condition of the lungs that is usually caused by cigarette smoking. In addition to daily symptoms and limitation in activities, patients are prone to developing chest infections called 'exacerbations'. Exacerbations are a big problem: unpleasant for patients, and sometimes severe enough to cause hospital admission (and therefore NHS pressures) and death. Reducing the impact of exacerbations is very important.
We have previously shown that earlier treatment of COPD exacerbations results in faster recovery, and reduced chance of hospital admission. Helping patients to detect exacerbations early is therefore important. We have also recently shown that monitoring heart rate and oxygen saturation via a finger probe may assist in this. However, measuring these variables when the patient is awake means they can be affected by other things, such as exercise and anxiety.
Our new idea is that measuring heart rate and oxygen level overnight, when a patient is asleep, will give the best chance of detecting COPD exacerbations early and our study will test that. We will randomly allocate 64 patients with COPD recruited from our service in London to standard monitoring, or overnight monitoring, for up to six months or the first exacerbation, whichever is sooner. We will then analyse whether overnight monitoring was able to detect exacerbations earlier, and therefore could be used to help patients get treatment earlier.
A subset of participants will also wear an activity monitor overnight for the first two weeks, so that we can assess the effect (if any) of overnight awake periods (such as trips to the bathroom) on the heart rate and saturation recording some of whom will be asked to wear the activity monitor for the full six months, which will enable us to correlate the changes in daily activity with sleep quality and exacerbations. The latter analysis is in conjunction with an industrial partner, with whom we will share the activity data.
REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/1120
Date of REC Opinion
21 Jul 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion