Home Spirometry
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Remote teaching of home spirometry in patients with respiratory symptoms.
IRAS ID
287426
Contact name
James Dodd
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
North Bristol NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
At North Bristol Lung Centre we are continually trying to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of our patients with lung disease and respiratory symptoms.
Spirometry is an essential investigation for diagnosis and assessment of patients presenting with respiratory symptoms and the monitoring of patients with known respiratory disease. It is used across many settings in both secondary and primary care. It requires subjects to blow into a tube which measures volume and flow of expired air. It involves specialist equipment and training to perform and interpret.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic spirometry is increasingly difficult to access in the healthcare environment due to the potential risk of infection. This has limited the numbers of patients that are able to have this investigation. Patients with respiratory disease/symptoms are also understandably anxious about attending healthcare settings and therefore are delaying appointments for diagnostic tests.
Home monitoring of spirometry has the potential to enable assessment of lung function in the patients home therefore increasing the number of patients able to access the test and enable longer term and more regular monitoring.
The aim of this study is to investigate whether patients can perform spirometry measurements at home and which method of teaching patients to perform the test works best. Participants will be allocated to either face to face, virtual and independent learning methods of teaching. We will then compare the results obtained from the home spirometry to those obtained from spirometry performed in the hospital to see which method of teaching is the most effective.
REC name
HSC REC A
REC reference
21/NI/0063
Date of REC Opinion
30 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion