Prof. dr. Wisia Wedzicha

Wisia Wedzicha studied at Oxford University and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and nowadays she is the Professor of Respiratory Medicine at University College London and the Royal Free and University College Medical School. She has been interested in COPD since about 1990 when she got involved in home oxygen services, which are often uses by people with late-stage COPD. Since 1996 she has done a lot of research on the mechanisms and impact of COPD exacerbations.She is the Chair of the British Thoracic Society working group on the home oxygen therapy, Editor in Chief of the journal Thorax, on the editorial board of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, still a practising consultant at Royal Free Hospital and she was a member of the Guideline Development Group for the NICE COPD guidelines. 

Her lecture at this years' ISCOMS will be about the following topic:

Impact of COPD exacerbations 

Abstract:
Exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are a major cause of morbidity and mortality and an important cause of hospital admission and readmission. Some patients are particularly prone to exacerbations and these are termed "frequent exacerbators". Patients with a high exacerbation frequency have faster disease progression, worse quality of life and greater mortality.

Exacerbations are episodes of increase in symptoms triggered often by respiratory viral infections such as human rhinovirus or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). They are thus more commoner in the winter months when more viral infections are present in the community. However COPD patients also have evidence of airway bacterial infection in the stable state and thus bacteria are associated with exacerbation, with increases in bacterial load at exacerbation. There is an urgent need to develop therapies both to treat exacerbations effectively and prevent exacerbations.