Adovocating For Our BE & NTM Community

For me, educating people about bronchiectasis isn’t just about explaining the disease—it’s also about advocating for early diagnosis. The sooner people receive the right care, the better their outcomes.

That’s why I actively share insights on LinkedIn, where I’ve built a strong community of over 8,000 connections, including many respiratory therapists and clinicians. 

Engaging with this network is another way I advocate for early detection, ensuring that more people recognize the signs of bronchiectasis and get the care they need as early as possible.

⭐️⭐️This is my latest LinkedIn post:⭐️⭐️

There are people who have bronchiectasis (BE) and also have asthma and/or COPD. However, according to Dr. Charles Daley, one of the top BE and NTM doctors in the world, there are others who are incorrectly diagnosed with asthma or COPD when, in fact, they have bronchiectasis.

As he recently said: (This transcription may contain minor errors.)
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“I would go out on a limb here and say, even though I can’t prove this point, I think most people with bronchiectasis have never been diagnosed, because to get diagnosed, the clinician, the provider, has to order a CT scan.

And if you don’t do that, then they’re going to just say your chronic cough is asthma, or it’s COPD, or as allergies is something else, but until you get the chest CT, you can’t see the dilated airways. And once you do that, then you can call this bronchiectasis.

There are many paths that lead to the condition bronchiectasis, but the symptoms are really what should drive the thinking about bronchiectasis. So a person has a chronic cough for months, often it’s producing sputum. They often have recurrent infections, and we call those exacerbations… So those are the things that should key the clinician to say, maybe this isn’t asthma. Maybe I should get an imaging study and figure out if this is bronchiectasis.”

Respiratory therapists: If you’re working with patients who are coughing, have sputum and are not improving on their current treatment, they might have bronchiectasis. Please bring it to the attention of your team physician.
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New bronchiectasis treatments are in the pipeline with some becoming available this year.  These treatments could greatly improve the quality of life for your patients. 
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 #RespiratoryCare #PulmonaryHealth #RespiratoryTherapist #Bronchiectasis #NTM #Asthma #COPD