An Emphysema Patient’s Lung Function Improves with a Spiration Valve System Over the Course of Five Years

Patients with extreme emphysema had further developed lung function at 5 years subsequent to getting treatment with a help expiration valve system, as per research introduced at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.

“Bronchoscopic lung volume reduction procedures are a durable treatment response compared to optimal medical therapy,” Gerard J. Criner, MD, FACP, FACCP, director of the Temple Lung Center and chair and professor of thoracic medicine and surgery at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, told.

Criner and partners assessed 172 patients with severe emphysema in the EMPROVE trial to check whether the Spiration Valve System (Olympus) was protected and viable over 5 years.

At two years, patients with severe emphysema who used the Spiration Valve System reported sustained clinically significant improvements in their health-related quality of life.

The mixed-effects model was used by the researchers to look at how lung function changed over the course of five years compared to when the study began.

In addition, the rate of serious adverse events was determined by dividing the number of events that occurred six months after the procedure by the remaining cumulative patient-years of follow-up.

113 patients were treated with the Spiration Valve System, while 59 patients were in the control group.

Patients’ FEV1 or lung function increased by 0.1098 L (P .001) following the procedure; According to the abstract, this measure decreased by 0.044 L per year (P .001) in both these patients and control patients.

Researchers assumed that disease progression was occurring at a “steady rate” because the two groups showed similar rates of decline. This indicated that patients who underwent the valve placement procedure immediately experienced approximately 2.5 years of improvement in FEV1.

Since researchers only followed control patients for two years, the rate of all serious adverse events was comparable between the two groups of patients, with a rate of 0.6, or 210 events in 5 years, in the treatment group and 0.48, or 35 events in 2 years, in the control group. Prominently, the pace of pneumothorax in the treatment bunch was 0.21, or 75 occasions in 5 years, and 0 in the benchmark group, as per the theoretical.

Based on the preceding findings, researchers deemed the treatment “safe and durable” in terms of improving lung function.

“This affirms the prior data with use of lung volume reduction surgery and non-controlled cohort follow-ups post bronchoscopic lung volume reduction that patients have a durable treatment response,” Criner told.