Pulmonology

The world of cystic fibrosis was radically changed in 2012 with the approval of the first cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) modulator, ivacaftor, which targets certain genetic mutations responsible for the disease. Now, a recently published study by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s multi-center Observational Study in People with CF with the G551D Mutation (GOAL) trial (conducted through the Therapeutics Development Network and funded through the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) finds that ivacaftor remains effective for at least 5.5 years. Study investigators included Children’s of Alabama pediatric pulmonologist Jennifer S. Guimbellot, M.D., Ph.D, Scott Sagel, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Colorado, and Steven M. Rowe M.D., who directs the Gregory Fleming James Cystic Fibrosis Research Center at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB), as well as other GOAL investigators,

The study followed patients who participated in the drug’s original six-month study. Although a small study with 96 participants, 81% continued as throughout the study duration. “To follow them over five years is a big feat,” said Guimbellot. But it allowed the team to understand whether ivacaftor is helpful with long-term use.

While the study found the drug remained effective overall, with clinically important improvements in lung function, pulmonary exacerbations, quality of life, weight gain, and P. aeruginosa infection, there were some differences based on age and baseline lung function. Adults and those with lower baseline lung function experienced greater improvements in lung function at 5.5 years than children and those with higher baseline lung function. As might be expected, quality-of-life improvement was greater in and more sustained in adults who had lower baseline quality of life scores. Importantly, this was the first study to show quality-of-life improvement beyond 2 years.

Another important finding is that while the overall cohort maintained an average lung function above the pre-ivacaftor level, some continued to experience lung function decline, particularly children. Some also continued to experience infections and remained underweight.

This suggests that “there’s something going on that we need to understand better,” Guimbellot said. “It doesn’t mean that ivacaftor doesn’t work for children; it definitely does work for children. It’s just something we don’t understand and there’s still room for improving care.”

One interesting observation is that while most participants gained weight (in part because they didn’t spend as much metabolic energy fighting the lung disease and attendant infections), some gained an unhealthy amount of weight. “This is something we have to pay attention to,” Guimbellot said. This may include revising the typical high-calorie, high-protein, high-fat diet recommended for certain people with CF to a more balanced diet.

The study is important not only because it shows the long-term effects of ivacaftor, she said, but because it can, hopefully, be extrapolated to the newest approved CTFR, a combination of elexacaftor, ivacaftor, and tezacaftor. Unlike ivacaftor, which is effective for just 4% or 5% of the CF population, this combination, approved in 2019, works in up to 90% of people with the disease.

“As a physician who helps diagnose newborns with cystic fibrosis, I am often asked what parents can expect the child’s lifespan to be,” Guimbellot said. Today the median age of survival is 47, but that doesn’t take into account the effect of the CTFR modulators. “With the new drugs,” she said, “we may see a population of children who don’t have the typical findings of cystic fibrosis as long as they adhere to their therapies.”

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, most clinics at Children’s of Alabama pivoted to telehealth visits, including pulmonology. Although things have primarily returned to normal with in-person visits, telehealth still has a presence in the outpatient setting.

Given that, an interprofessional team of Pediatric Pulmonary Trainees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham led by Valerie Tarn, MS, RD, LD, training director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Center (PPC), launched a survey to assess how families and clinicians felt about televisits in the pulmonary clinic. “We wanted to evaluate our services and get feedback from our families since many have children with special healthcare needs that require multiple visits per year,” she said. “We wondered if we could do telehealth for every other visit in some populations.”

They surveyed families that had already had a televisit (most used their phones) and those that hadn’t, as well as clinicians who participated in the televisits, to see what, if any, barriers existed as well as collect demographic information.

Most families who had participated in telehealth said they would like to continue for some, but not all, visits. The greatest advantages were avoiding COVID-19 infection and not having to drive to the hospital. The latter is particularly important, Tarn said, since many families drive an hour or more to the clinic. As one parent commented, “This has been wonderful experience! I don’t have to worry about exposing her to COVID or the flu, which is very dangerous for my child. Hope to be able to continue this service in the future!”

About 90 percent of families that hadn’t had a pulmonary televisit reported having Internet access. When asked about potential disadvantages to such visits, they noted the inability to conduct a physical exam. As one parent wrote,  “Please allow the patient to have a choice as to whether or not the appointment is to be in-person or a telehealth appointment.”

Clinicians agreed that telehealth was probably here to stay, Tarn said, but they wanted a more consistent structure. That included prescreening families and finding ways to incorporate other members of the health care team into the visit. “A lot of our patients need to see other health professionals,” she said. “How do you get them to talk with the pharmacist or social worker or nutritionist?” In the spring, the doctors were typically emailing other clinicians or leaving a message in the patient’s secure medical record about the need for follow up.

In the cystic fibrosis clinic, however, nutritionists, social workers, and other allied health professionals rotatedthrough the visit, each taking turns with the iPad. “That worked fairly smoothly,” Tarn said, and could provide a model for other pulmonary clinics.

In the future, the clinicians noted, it would be helpful if patients had home equipment available, such as spirometers, peak flow meters, and weight scales.

But overall, Tarn said, families and healthcare professionals liked telehealth. Now that the surveys have been collected, the PPC trainees plan to present the research results to an interprofessional audience at a local or regional conference.

It’s not easy living with cystic fibrosis (CF). The multitude of medications, therapies and nutritional supplements that children and adolescents with the disease require can be exhausting and overwhelming, leading to high rates of nonadherence, particularly in adolescents. That’s why Gabriela Oates, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pulmonary and sleep medicine in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Pediatrics at Children’s of Alabama, is working to create a mobile health application designed to bridge the gap between what is and what should be when it comes to managing the disease.

The application builds on one developed in Sweden, which 65 to 87% of CF families in that country now use. Called Genia, the app is used to track symptoms, activities and aspects of daily care and share them with the clinical team.

In modifying Genia for the U.S., Oates and her team didn’t rely on what they thought it should look like. They turned to the experts, holding five focus groups with adolescents with CF, families of younger children with CF and the clinicians who care for them. The approach is called “health care service coproduction” and its central tenet is getting buy-in from both clinicians and patients. It’s part of the movement away from the paternalistic view of health and medicine in which the doctor alone drives the process.

The focus groups showed differences between what the clinicians wanted the app to do and what the families and patients asked for, something Oates said the team expected. “The clinicians don’t have the lived experience of managing the disease on a daily basis; our patients and families provided that. However, the clinicians told us what’s necessary to make it work in the clinic; capturing just the patient perspective would have led to an app that’s not workable in the clinical setting.”

Among the changes the focus group participants requested and the team implemented were adding a mental health tracker, making other trackers (i.e., nutrition, medication, physical activity) more specific, syncing the app with calendars and customizing the app with avatars, images and colors.

One thing parents wanted that the adolescents didn’t: the ability to see their child’s entries. On this point, the team decided that the account holder gets to determine the privacy setting and each family decides who the account holder is. “This is normal,” said Oates. “Our children are supposed to become independent and take over the management of their own health condition.”

She and her team are currently conducting a pilot study about the impact of the app’s use on clinical outcomes, with results expected later this year. So far, they are getting high praise from physicians, families and patients. For instance, the patients/families love that they can use the app to submit pre-visit reports instead of completing long paper forms in the waiting room. The clinical team, on the other hand, appreciates having a detailed view of patients’ symptoms or struggles before seeing them in clinic; it helps them understand what’s going on in their patients’ lives and better tailor treatment plans. The app also flags potential problems and shares them with the CF care team on a weekly basis, which allows for earlier intervention.

With the help of the Children’s CF care team, Oates hopes to transition Genia from research settings to a standard of care. Recently, the app was translated to Spanish and made available for both Android and Apple devices. This will allow it to reach a larger segment of CF families to help them manage daily care and better integrate their experiences in treatment plans.

Break down the word “aerodigestive” and you can understand why the condition is so complex and intertwined. Children with aerodigestive conditions often have overlapping disorders involving the upper airway, larynx, trachea, esophagus and lungs, all of which originally developed embryonically from a common source.

One patient may have symptoms affecting multiple systems. At most pediatric hospitals, each condition is treated separately; subspecialists typically focus on the organ of their expertise and not the child holistically.

At Children’s of Alabama’s Aerodigestive Clinic, families don’t need to make multiple appointments and repeated trips to the hospital to see a slew of medical professionals. Instead, they can see a multidisciplinary team of pediatric subspecialists during a single clinic visit and receive coordinated care. Children’s Aerodigestive Program is the only one in Alabama and one of just a few around the country.

“We felt there was a big gap in care, and that led to frustrations that maybe we weren’t meeting their needs,” explained clinic coordinator Ashley Chapman of why Children’s started the program. Chapman focuses on improving communication and facilitating access.

The result of better care has improved both patient and provider satisfaction. “Families appreciate that they don’t feel ‘bounced’ around the medical system,” said pediatric gastroenterologist Reed Dimmitt, M.D.

“Our team is a fun, collaborative group,” added pediatric pulmonologist Tom Harris, M.D. “Previously, we each treated the patients in a general clinic but were limited by our individual skill set. This approach allows us to lean on one another’s expertise, asking, ‘How can we improve care by working together?’”

Consider the triple endoscopy (direct laryngoscopy bronchoscopy, flexible bronchoscopy and esophagogastroduodenoscopy) with the ENT surgeon, pulmonologist and gastroenterologist all in the procedure room. Before, patients would need three separate procedures, requiring three times under general anesthesia with separate interpretations. Now, the three physicians meet together with the family post-procedure to discuss findings and deliver the management plan.

“It’s an additive model, but there’s also a synergy that occurs with everyone meeting together, which contributes to better outcomes,” said Dimmitt. “Collaborating with the multidisciplinary team,” he said, “pushes me to think outside the GI box.” The aerodigestive coordinator, speech pathologist and dietician are central to management plans, providing additional non-M.D. layers of coordination, expertise and pragmatic considerations.

The clinic offers in-person as well as telemedicine visits, and is growing fast, with referrals doubling in the past two years. “That’s also led to more complex patients,” added Dimmitt. “To meet these many needs, we spend a lot of time with the parents.”

The team receives referrals from a variety of sources, including inpatient subspecialists, community pediatricians and speech pathologists, among others. “My favorite referrals,” Harris said, “are families telling friends. That’s when we know we have succeeded.”

“What we hear from parents is that they are so thankful for the collaborative care, the time everyone spends and that their concerns are heard,” said Chapman.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine Division of Pediatric Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine at Children’s of Alabama continues to expand, with two new faculty joining in July.

Pedro Anis Nourani, M.D., anassistant professor in the division, earned his medical degree at the University of São Paulo and completed his pediatric residency at Texas A&M’s Driscoll Children’s Hospital. He finished his sleep medicine and pulmonary fellowships at UAB and decided to stay.

“It’s definitely the people that work here,” he said of his decision to remain in Birmingham. “The collaboration between everyone, the excellent support from not just the physicians, but everyone in the department. This group has extensive expertise on subspecialities within pulmonary medicine, which provides good support for someone just starting their career.”

He was drawn to pulmonology medicine, he said, because it’s the “best that pediatrics has to offer.” That includes long-lasting relationships with patients; continuity of care; a strong inpatient presence and the ability to perform procedures. And he was drawn to UAB for his fellowship because of its large pediatric sleep lab. He interviewed at other institutions upon finishing his fellowships, “but there just wasn’t the support and excellence.”

He and his wife have three children, the youngest of whom was born at UAB.

Guillermo Beltran Ale, M.D., an assistant professor in pulmonology, was born and raised in Peru, where attended Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia medical school. He completed his pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, then stayed for his pediatric pulmonary fellowship. “I’ve been interested in pulmonology forever,” he said. First because of asthma and cystic fibrosis, with its complex management system and physiology. Then because of the strong bronchoscopy program at Cincinnati and its relationship with chronic ventilator management.

He chose Children’s because it offered a place to grow his skills and continue his research on the pathology of long-term ventilation. He moved to Birmingham with his wife and dog in the summer and started his new career at Children’s July 1.

COVID-19 has, of course, changed the experience of moving to a new city. “We meet a lot of people but we can only see their eyes,” he said. Nonetheless, “we enjoy Birmingham so far.”