Conditions: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Keywords: breathing difficulty
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: CROSSOVER
Enrollment: 20
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Some patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) report that they are uncertain whether they achieve clinical benefit using a dry-powder inhaler (DPI). One possible explanation is that the patient is unable to inhale the dry powder bronchodilator medication into the lower respiratory tract due to a low peak inspiratory flow rate (PIFR). A PIFR \< 60 l/min is considered to be suboptimal flow for a DPI, including the Diskus device. The hypothesis of the study is that the forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) measured at two hours after inhalation of the study medication will be higher with arformoterol solution (15 mcg) from a nebulizer compared with salmeterol dry powder (50 mcg) inhaled from the Diskus.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: beta-2 agonist bronchodilator arm 2: beta-2 agonist bronchodilator

Interventions: intervention 1: arformoterol intervention 2: salmeterol
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 15 mcg administered via nebulizer intervention 2: 50 mcg delivered vis Diskus

Protocol document: