Multidimensional Dyspnea Scale in Interstitial Lung Diseases
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Multidimensional Dyspnoea Scale (MDDS) in Interstitial Lung Diseases: Understanding dyspnoea severity and Impact of MDDS use in Individuals with Interstitial Lung Disease
IRAS ID
321211
Contact name
Shaney Barratt
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
North Bristol NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Breathlessness is a common problem for many patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD). ILD is a group of lung diseases that cause inflammation (swelling) and scarring in the lung tissue where gas exchange (oxygen and carbon dioxide) occurs. Unfortunately there is no cure for these conditions and as a result many patients decline over time with worsening breathlessness. This places serious limits on their ability to live a good life. This is mostly because clinicians do not often recognize, assess or treat breathlessness appropriately. Breathlessness, being a subjective experience, cannot be fully understood through objective measurements such as lung function tests, the arterial blood gas test etc. The objective and subjective measures of breathlessness are frequently disconnected. Clinicians who often rely on these types of tests do not directly enquire, into its nature and severity of breathlessness from patients themselves. As a result, they remain unaware of this disabling symptoms and the extent of its impact on patients. While there are many tools to measure breathlessness, none can assess subjective aspects of breathlessness like severity in a way that can help clinicians identify the problem and prescribe appropriate treatments. This results in needless suffering for patients and their families and prevents them from receiving timely and appropriate therapies. We, therefore, propose to and test an easy to use tool that combines the subjective and objective aspects of breathlessness. We hope that the tool will help clinicians quickly identify the patient’s breathlessness severity and provide them with an algorithm of what to do next. The first step is to examine the tool's psychometric properties, reliability, and validity for use in ILD.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 5
REC reference
23/WS/0058
Date of REC Opinion
11 Apr 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion