The 2nd Regional Respiratory Forum hosted by Boehringer Ingelheim, highlighted that 5.3% of Lebanon's population suffers from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The forum revolved around respiratory diseases focusing on COPD, highlighting the rapid increase in prevalence of COPD and productive cough in the MENA region. Today, 13 million people in the region suffer from COPD. During the forum, it was observed that 45.9% COPD patients remain untreated in the Lebanon - constituting 2.4% of the country's entire population. Furthermore, 45.9% of patients in Lebanon suffer from irreversible lung attacks. 1
The main aim of this year's conference was to create awareness on the importance of maintenance treatment in COPD, with long term benefits for patients.
During the forum, Professor David Halpin, Consultant Physician & Honorary Associate Professor, revealed new bronchodilator therapies that were recently launched for the treatment of COPD, highlighting evidence on the short-term efficacy of these drugs. He further highlighted the role of other new therapies for COPD including evidence regarding anti-inflammatory therapies and therapies that modulate mucus secretion, as well as considering novel interventional bronchoscopy techniques to achieve lung volume reduction.
At the forum, Prof. Dr. Mirna Waked, Head of Pulmonary division at St George Hospital University Medical Center in Lebanon, highlighted that diagnosing COPD without spirometry is still a challenge. To date, COPD remains highly undiagnosed and the only way to determine COPD is through spirometry which is selectively available in the region in tertiary care centers only. Given that COPD is expected to become the third leading cause of mortality in 20201 there is a dire need to develop a scale for diagnosis of the progressive disease. This urgent need to determine COPD has led Dr. Waked to development a simple diagnosis score including risk factors and symptoms with good predictive value for positive diagnosis of COPD and high negative predictive value excluding COPD. The properties of the score are superior to any other score developed previously; more importantly, they allow for rapid diagnosis for COPD in primary care centers which can potentially decrease the percentage of untreated patients in the region.
In Lebanon, despite the public smoking ban being implemented in 2011, the prevalence of COPD still remains relatively high. COPD prevalence was 11.3% in non-water-pipe smokers, 11.6% in smokers of less than 15 water-pipe-years, 18.2% if cumulative smoking was between 15 and 40 water-pipe-years, and 37.2% if cumulative smoking surpassed 40 water-pipe-years (P < 0.001 for trend. 2 In the case of smokers, the majority of the cases are not recognized and treated for COPD. It is imperative to raise awareness about COPD amongst health care professionals and the public, to create opportunities for early treatments and prevention. 10
In accordance to a study conducted by Dr. Waked in Lebanon, the highest prevalence for COPD was found in mixed-smokers "Cigarette & water pipe" (31.1%), compared with 3.4% of COPD in never-smokers. Smoking has been identified as the main cause of COPD2 and looking at the smoking status of 2201 people included, only 33.3% had never smoked.2
Dr. Dalia Mahmoud Amr, Regional Medical Affairs Manager at Boehringer Ingelheim, Middle East & North Africa, said, "COPD, a condition that is especially common among smokers, remains a major public health concern. In the Middle East, where smoking is increasingly prevalent, the disease is on the rise and remains vastly under-diagnosed and under-treated. The burden of treatment and maintenance of this preventable and manageable disease fast deplete public healthcare systems and funds if the percentage of untreated patients keeps increasing. We intend to raise awareness of the disease in order to ease this public burden and help these patients to improve the quality of their life by using simple, effective medications and making relatively small changes to their lifestyle."
The forum took place in the presence of over 300 senior pulmonologists, internists, respiratory therapists, medical specialists, and professors representing the healthcare industry from UK, South Africa, Italy, Germany, GCC countries, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Libya and Jordan.
