Patients sought for lung study

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 23, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated October 23, 2008 at 12:43 a.m.

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Denver researchers are looking for people who have a hard time breathing - and an even harder time exhaling.

They are trying to see whether poking a half-dozen holes in the lungs of people with emphysema can ease the hyperinflamation and make it easier to breathe.

The clinical trial will take place at National Jewish Health facilities in the Denver area.

To understand the strategy, it is important to understand emphysema, a disease affecting millions of Americans.

Often brought on by smoking, emphysema destroys lung tissue, leaving the lungs stiff and overinflated with air that can't escape.

As the lungs lose their natural elasticity and airways collapse, it becomes difficult to exhale. Patients have to work very hard just to breathe.

Emphysema is chronic, progressive and irreversible. But if there was a way to let some of that air escape, without causing other complications, that could be a godsend to the sufferers.

Principal investigator Dr. Ali Musani hopes that poking holes - and keeping them open - can open a pathway connecting the damaged lung tissue to the natural airway.

National Jewish is recruiting patients for the trial. It will last from 15 months to five years, depending on whether a patient is randomly placed in a control group or the treatment group.

For more information, call 303-398-1082 or send an e-mail to dormutha@njc.org.

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