Home
General
We are writing to share the link to register for the second webinar in the NIHR ARC Palliative and End of Life Care National Leadership Webinar Series: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nihr-arc-palliative-and-end-of-life-care-national-leadership-webinar-series-tickets-1049468868637.
The Webinar will take place online, on Monday 2 December, 11am – 12pm GMT.
It is free to attend, and everyone welcome to join. The session will focus on breathlessness in palliative and end of life care research, offering valuable insights and discussions from leading experts in the field. Further information can be found on the above link.
Interview between Professor Irene Higginson and Touch Respiratory sharing the the rationale behind the Better-B research, discussing the findings, and exploring the implications for clinical practice. Please got to the home page to see the link to the interview.
We are very pleased to announce the publication of a Practice review 'Pharmacological management of severe chronic breathlessness in adults with advanced life-limiting diseases'.
The review provides practice recommendations on the safe use of pharmacological therapies for severe chronic breathlessness. Please go to the publications page to view.
We are delighted that the BETTER-B trial results are now published by The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
To find out more about the trial results, please go to the BETTER-B trial results page in the project menu.
We have developed a summary of our findings and recommendations from the BETTER-B trial in briefs targeted at patients, carers, clinicians and policy makers. Please see the home page and project menu to access the briefs.
Professor Irene Higginson will be presenting findings from the BETTER-B trial as part of the Clinical Trials session: ALERT 2: Fighting the burden of asthma and respiratory symptoms. The session at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Vienna runs today, Monday 9 September from 1530-1700 (local time).
We are delighted that the BETTER-B trial paper will be part of the ALERT sessions at the September 2024 European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Vienna, Austria, where Professor Irene Higginson will be presenting the findings from the trial.
Members of the BETTER-B team attended the European Association of Palliative Care 13th World Research Congress held during May.
To read more please go to the EAPC page in the Project menu.
We are pleased to announce new publications by BETTER-B Consortium members. You can access the papers from the publications page.
We recently had two BETTER-B abstracts accepted as an oral presentation and e-poster.
Dr Callum Vyner will be delivering a talk on the practicalities of merging the Europe and Australia/New Zealand data across two different types of databases at the Society for Clinical Trials conference on the 20th of May in the United States of America.
Dr Adejoke Oluyase will be presenting an e-poster on the challenges of running an international multicentre trial of a pharmacological product during Brexit at the upcoming 13th World Research Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care in Barcelona, Spain, 16 – 18 May 2024.
We had our exciting BETTER-B final conferences on the 4th and 11th of December 2023. These online events were dedicated to exploring the management of refractory breathlessness.
To find out more information on the conferences and how to access the slides and recordings from the two days, please go to the final conferences page in the Project menu.
We would like to cordially invite you to the BETTER-B programme's final conferences, which takes place online over two days, the 4th and 11th of December from 1:30-3pm GMT.
The events are free to attend and open to anyone. Interested parties need to register using the EventBrite links below for the day(s) to receive the log-in details.
The BETTER-B programme comes to an end on the 31st of Dec 2023. It has been exciting and informative carrying out this important research during Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. We look forward to sharing the results and outputs with you very soon!
We want to thank all the patients, caregivers, PPI members, partners and charities that have supported us along the way.
We're pleased to announce to you that we have just released this month's newsletter.
For updates on recruitment numbers and progress, as well as dissemination news, follow this link or access the newsletter from the dedicated sub-page.
The BETTER-B team wishes you happy holidays and a happy new year!
We are delighted to inform you that our UCSC team in Rome led by Professor Giovanni Gambassi have recruited and randomised their first BETTER-B participant! This has been followed with recruitment of another two patients by the team.
We now have 190 patients and 66 caregivers recruited into the trial.
We are delighted to let you know that the Gdansk team in Poland led by Professor Ewa Jassem have recruited and randomised their first BETTER-B participant!
Consortium members were involved in a newly published multi-society policy statement on early palliative care for people with serious respiratory illness. Please click 'More' below for further information and a link to the statement.
We are delighted to inform you that our August newsletter has been released!
You can find the newsletter, which includes updates on recruiting and BETTER-B publications and features, here.
We are very pleased to announce that the first patient at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Ireland has been randomised.
A new study titled 'OptBreathe' has examined patient preferences for breathlessness services and found cost savings for the NHS.
Congratulations to the team at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Ireland, who are now open to start recruiting to the Better-B main trial!
Another EU project, Fresh Air, is trialling a traditional Kyrgyz dance to help ease chronic lung disease. To read the article, click 'More' below.
We are delighted about CORDIS_EU journalists’ coverage of the EU funded BETTER-B study led by Prof Irene Higginson. To read the article, click 'More' below.
We are delighted that the UCSC site in Rome led by Professor Giovanni Gambassi opened for recruitment! Thanks to all the BETTER-B team members that have helped to ensure the site is open and ready to randomise potential participants.
We are delighted to inform you that the WP1 survey paper has been accepted for publication in BMC Pulmonary Medicine. The paper is titled:
"Do guidelines influence breathlessness management in advanced lung diseases? A multinational survey of respiratory medicine and palliative care physicians".
We are delighted to let you know that our Solingen team in Germany led by Prof. Dr. Winfried Randerath have recruited and randomised their first Better-B participant! This brings the numbers recruited to 59 patients and 28 caregivers.
We are delighted to inform you that our December newsletter has been released!
You can find the newsletter, which includes updates on recruiting, here.
We are delighted to let you know that our AUSL Correggio team in Italy led by Dr. Mirco Lusuardi have recruited and randomised their first Better-B participant! This brings the numbers recruited to 55 patients and 27 caregivers.
Our AUSL site in Santa Maria Nuova has successfully randomised and recruited three patients already!
We are pleased to announce that our site at Santa Maria Nuova is now open, and can begin to randomise eligible patients to participate in the BETTER-B main trial!
The European Lung Foundation have published an article promoting the Better-B trial to all eligible readers experiencing COPD or ILD. We hope this will help us reach a wider audience than previously possible, and help offer the trial and resources to a greater number of people living with chronic breathlessness.
We’re delighted to say that our recently opened site in Cologne has recruited and randomised their first patient!
The BETTER-B project has now recruited 32 patients and 14 caregivers across all sites!
Congratulations to the team at Solingen Centre for Sleep and Respiratory Medicine, who are now open to initiate recruitment to the Better-B study!
The BETTER-B project has now recruited 27 patients and 10 caregivers across the UK, Germany, and Ireland!
The first BETTER-B Main Trial Recruitment E-newsletter has been published, reporting on our targets and the number of patients recruited over the six sites open in the UK, Ireland and Germany. Congratulations to the teams in Munich and at King's College Hospital who recruited the most participants in July 2021!
The BETTER-B project has now recruited 20 patients and 7 caregivers across sites in London, Nottingham, Hull, Dublin, and Munich!
We have now our second site in Germany successfully open, with Cologne following Munich!
In only a week after opening, our Munich site successfully randomised their first participant today!
We are pleased to inform that our site in Munich is now open, and can now begin to approach and randomise potentially eligible patients to participate in the BETTER-B main trial.
We’re delighted to say that our partners in Ireland have recruited their first patient!
Find out more about what we have achieved so far in 2021, how participants have perceived the BETTER-B programme so far and what we are working on at the moment!
Professor David Currow of the University of Technology Sydney assisted the American Society of Clinical Oncology in issuing a new guideline on the clinical management of dyspnea in adult patients with advanced cancer.
Our Australian partners have successfully opened their first 2 sites and randomised their first 2 participants.
Dr. Matthew Maddocks at King's College London has worked with the European Society for Medical Oncology to publish a new clinical practice guideline, aimed at aiding the management of breathlessness in patients with cancer.
We're delighted to let you know that the first BETTER-B trial participant has been recruited and randomised!
Find out more about the what we have achieved in the last six months, how COVID-19 has impacted our project and our mission and what we are working on at the moment.
Find out more about the what we have achieved in the last six months, how COVID-19 has impacted our project and our mission and what we are working on at the moment.
Imagine how it would feel to struggle every time you take a breath. This is the lived experience of people with severe, persistent breathlessness. Such breathlessness is often a symptom of people with advanced diseases such as cancer and lung disease.
In January 2020, the BETTER-B Feasibility main trial paper was published as a Brief Communication in Thorax. The BETTER-B Feasibility team were delighted to report that the trial successfully achieved its primary endpoint of recruiting over 60 (64 in total) patients in 3 sites over 1 year.
As we come to the end of the first year of the study, find out more about what we have achieved so far, and learn more about one of our partner leads.