Establishing Criteria for Pulmonary Exacerbation Based on Severity Score in Adult Cystic Fibrosis Patients

What is it about?

In this paper we tried to come up with a scoring system to actually define what actually is an acute exacerbation of cystic fibrosis. Just like some one with asthma or COPD can have an acute flares, people with cystic fibrosis can also have acute flare ups requiring intravenous antibiotics. Unfortunately there is no standard definition of this acute flare up and we came up with a questioner that was given to patients at the time of clinic visit. Based on the symptoms they check off on the questioner we assign numerical score and any score >5 was defined as acute flare up.

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Why is it important?

By having a standard definition of an acute exacerbation, we hoped to diagnose acute flare ups early so that they can get antibiotics in timely manner as each exacerbation is associated with significant decline in lung function. We also wanted to evaluate if this will lead to decline in un necessary antibiotics and hospital admissions.