6 December, 2017

A. Oral and chaired sessions:

• Silvia Colicino: oral presentation entitled ‘Developing new prediction models for persistent asthma in young adulthood’. This study of over 20,000 UK children has identified the main factors that may predict persistent asthma by the age of 20, and one major factor that could help protect against it. This tool will potentially prove useful to health professionals providing more certainty in predicting which child is likely to develop asthma later in life. 

- Silvia’s abstract has been shortlisted to be promoted to national and medical media. She has been interviewed by the BTS press office and the ‘Daily Mail’ to highlight the importance and potential of the study.

• Jo Feary:

- chaired a session (with Jennie Hoyle, Manchester) entitled ‘Danger at Work: occupational lung disease and asthma’ which included presentations from different occupational lung disease centres across the UK and stimulated lively discussion.  

- presented the outcomes of our follow-up survey of patients attending the Royal Brompton Hospital clinic who are diagnosed with occupational asthma or occupational rhinitis. The key learning point from this is that if people are diagnosed early then their symptoms get better within a few months.

- as an elected member of the BTS specialist advisory group on OEM (occupational and environmental medicine), Jo attended the annual meeting where they discussed their role in commenting on national guidelines (e.g. the new NICE guidelines on diagnosis and management of asthma) and in providing training and up-to-date courses such as the BTS short course in OEM.

• Jo Szram, with Ruth Wiggans (Southport), chaired a session entitled ‘Fruit flies to footballers’. Dept presenters were as follows:

- Mary Brian: ‘Identification of allergens present in drosophila melanogaster using a serum immunoblotting method'

- Dominic Fernandes (BSc/undergraduate medical student): ’Investigating the diagnostic performance of specific immunological tests in occupational asthma’

- Meinir Jones: ‘Occupational allergy to fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) in laboratory workers’.

 

B. Posters

• Olga Archangelidi: 'A national study of non-invasive ventilation and clinical outcomes in cystic fibrosis'.  She states that Cystic Fibrosis has attracted a lot of interest, and many people from various institutes across UK and abroad were present to discuss important issues related to CF.
• Sara De Matteis: ‘Update of the British Occupational Health Research Foundation (BOHRF) evidence-based guidelines on the prevention and management of occupational asthma’.

Dr De Matteis concluded that exposure to respiratory hazards at work is still an important cause of asthma worldwide and in the UK, with important costs for both the individual and the society.  Updated evidence-based guidelines on the prevention and management of occupational asthma are key to guide healthcare workers’ decision-making in their routine clinical practice.

• Stephen Nyangoma: 'The impact the introduction of a universal ‘Payment by Results’ annual tariff to CF centres upon the North-South Divide in England'.
• Carl Reynolds: ‘Mortality from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in England and Wales by birth cohort’.

Above right: Photo of the conference venue - Queen Elizabeth II Centre - by Mary Brian.