Up to 70 Percent of People With Asthma and COPD Go Undiagnosed

In spring 2020, Jazzminn Hein received an automated phone call from The Ottawa Hospital in Canada, asking if she or anyone in her household had experienced wheezing, shortness of breath or other breathing problems in recent months. The question caught her attention: Just a week earlier, Ms. Hein, then 24, had gone on a stroll with her mother-in-law and newborn only to end up feeling like her chest was burning.

“I realized that I had had breathing issues from a very young age,” Ms. Hein said. As a child, she often had to catch her breath on the sidelines during gym class. As an adult, she frequently had to pause after carrying laundry up the stairs. So Ms. Hein pressed “1” to receive a follow-up call from a nurse.

A few months later, as part of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Ottawa, a doctor diagnosed Ms. Hein with asthma.

Estimates suggest that 20 to 70 percent of people with asthma or another group of conditions called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that causes similar symptoms, go undiagnosed.

To look for patients with those diseases, researchers placed automated calls to more than a million households across Canada asking about breathing issues. Many people hung up. But the research team talked to more than 38,000 people experiencing such symptoms, and ultimately found more than 500 patients, including Ms. Hein, with either undiagnosed asthma or C.O.P.D who could participate in their clinical trial.

Roughly half were told to follow up with their primary care provider and received standard care, such as a short-acting inhaler to be used as needed. The other half saw pulmonologists who frequently prescribed better, long-acting medication and worked with an educator who taught patients how to properly use an inhaler and avoid allergens, provided support to quit smoking, gave exercise and weight counseling, and more. These measures could help reduce symptoms, said Dr. Shawn Aaron, a lung specialist at The Ottawa Hospital and a professor at the University of Ottawa who led the research.