Bronchial thermoplasty in asthma: 2-year follow-up using optical coherence tomography

Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is a novel, nonpharmacological procedure for treatment of severe asthma. Recently, the Asthma Intervention Research 2 clinical trial demonstrated asthmatics had fewer hospitalisations following BT, which persisted 5 years after therapy [1]. However, it is well recognised that asthma is a heterogeneous disease with distinct asthma phenotypes and, not surprisingly, not all asthmatics in that trial benefited from BT [2]. Optical coherence tomography small airway imaging may be used for better patient phenotyping and selection for BT We thank Myles McKinnon, Jennifer Campbell and Chulho Hyun (British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada) for their assistance with the bronchoscopy procedures.