Long Term Significance of LCI in Patients With Cystic Fibrosis
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Об исследовании
The current dream in CF research is to discover safe drugs that correct the basic defect and prevent lung disease, allowing patients without significant lung damage to live nearly normal lives with a dramatic increase in life expectancy and without the burden of current treatment. The compound VX-770 (Ivacaftor Ò) is hoped to be the first milestone along this way. Progression of lung disease is now so gradual in many centres that sensitive indicators of early lung disease (small airways disease) are critically needed to assess the effects of such new treatments. In this context, assessment of ventilation inhomogeneity by the measurement called Lung clearance index (LCI) seems to be the most promising tool. However, to get approval by health authorities, new measures used in drug evaluation need to fulfill strict criteria. For LCI, the investigators still need to prove its long term significance: How well does the LCI measurement predict the long term lung disease course? Therefore, in this study the investigators want to measure LCI at baseline in a large patient cohort and establish how well it predicts the patients' disease course over the next 2 years.