Suboptimal peak inspiratory flow rate in COPD patients: the importance of assessment in clinical practice. Expert Council Consensus

Pharmacotherapy for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is administered through various inhalation devices. The inhalers have different designs, principles of operation and activation methods, the number of steps necessary to prepare the device for use, the resistance that the patient has to overcome with inhalation, and many other characteristics. The suboptimal choice of an inhalation device may affect the clinical outcomes of the disease. Therefore, the guidelines consider replacement of the inhaler to be an alternative to escalation of therapy with treatment failure. When choosing an inhalation device, a number of the patient’s clinical features should be considered, including the patient's ability to induce an inspiration effort. Since devices that estimate the force of inspiratory effort at different resistances are not available in Russian Federation for routine clinical practice, the expert group described some clinical features that may be observed in patients with suboptimal inspiratory flow based on the existing data. Their final choice was made by voting according to the Delphi panel method that accounts for the opinion of each expert.