Table 1.

History of bronchial thermoplasty: major studies since 2006

Study	Study population	Study design	Results
Cox et al21	16 patients with mild-to-moderate stable asthma	Non-randomized, prospective study	Significant reduction in airway hyperresponsiveness and increase of symptoms-free days. No changes in FEV1
Cox et al22	112 patients with moderate-to-severe asthma	Randomized, controlled trial	Improvements of asthma symptoms, symptom-free days, and AQLQ and ACQ scores, and reduction in mild exacerbations. No changes in FEV1 and bronchial hyperreactivity
Pavord et al23	32 patients with severe uncontrolled asthma	Randomized, double- blind, parallel-group trial	Significant improvement in FEV1 and ACQ scores. Limitation: effective placebo
Castro et al24	288 patients with severe, uncontrolled asthma	Randomized, double- blind, controlled, multicenter-based trial	Increase of AQLQ score, and reduction of rate of exacerbations, emergency hospital visits, and lost working days
Thomson et al25	69 patients enrolled in the AIR trial	Long-term follow-up study	Significant reduction in airway hyperreactivity and stability of FEV1. No radiological changes
Pavord et al26	14 patients enrolled in RISA trial	Long-term follow-up study	Significant decrease of emergency hospital admissions. No changes of FEV1 value
Wechsler et al27	160 patients enrolled in AIR-2 trial	Long-term follow-up study	Significant decrease of emergency hospital admissions

Abbreviations: FEV₁, forced expiratory volume in one second; AQLQ, Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire; ACQ, Asthma Control Questionnaire; AIR, Asthma Intervention Research; RISA, Research in Severe Asthma.