It’s crucial for patients to understand the impact of bronchiectasis exacerbations and the importance of partnering with their health care provider for timely management. The ATS Bronchiectasis Education Center offers the resources care teams need.

Developed by leading experts, the ATS Bronchiectasis Education Center provides essential education to improve awareness of exacerbations and their role in disease progression.

“Awareness is the most important thing the Bronchiectasis Education Center does,” said Christopher Richards, MD, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Bronchiectasis Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital. “Bronchiectasis has been a forgotten topic for years, and one that has a lot of fatalism associated with it.  It is a diagnosis missed by many pulmonologists and undertreated by most.”

Attendees of the ATS 2025 International Conference can learn more by visiting the Bronchiectasis Education Center located in Hall D (South Building, Exhibition Level) between the Networking Super Center and the ATS Center.

The center’s “Experts in Dialogue” podcast series features bronchiectasis experts to provide timely information on diagnosis and management for busy clinicians. Episodes posted to date include discussions on pseudomonas eradication, airway clearance therapy, inhaled antibiotics, and more.

Providers can also explore the Bronchiectasis Education Center’s “Rapid Case Consults: Interactive Patient Cases.” These resources offer rapid and realistic patient case scenarios, where bronchiectasis experts share their own experiences and overall guidance on patient management. Scenarios range from (but are not limited to) initial diagnosis to recurrent exacerbations to severe complications. Each interactive case only takes about 10 minutes to complete, making these offerings pragmatic for clinicians with packed schedules looking for professional development opportunities outside of the clinic.

The Bronchiectasis Education Center website will also feature webinars, with the first live and onsite in San Francisco during ATS 2025. Dr. Richards and Anne O’Donnell, MD, division chief of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine, MedStar Health, and medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Georgetown University, will lead the 2025 live session from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. PT on Sunday, May 18.

Drs. Richards and O’Donnell provided clinicians with a comprehensive understanding of bronchiectasis, focusing on early identification, disease progression, and evolving treatment strategies. Participants can learn about topics like clinical presentation and diagnostic criteria to enhance recognition and reduce misdiagnosis, along with the impact of pulmonary exacerbations on bronchial remodeling and disease progression, emphasizing the need for timely intervention to prevent further lung damage. Finally, the faculty will review the current treatment landscape, highlighting standard management approaches and the critical unmet need for targeted therapies. With no approved therapies specifically for bronchiectasis, this session will equip care providers with essential knowledge to optimize patient care while anticipating advancements in treatment.

The site will soon also feature patient resources, which providers can share to enhance patients’ knowledge as well as their own.

“Many providers don’t know the basics of treatment, and with new treatments on the horizon, greater education and a baseline skills set more broadly need to be in place now,” Dr. Richards said.

Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the latest insights and clinical best practices today.

This program was produced in collaboration with Insmed Incorporated. Insmed did not have input on content development.