ReviewNPJ primary care respiratory medicine2022
Assessment and diagnosis of chronic dyspnoea: a literature review.
Review in NPJ primary care respiratory medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review on the effectiveness and impact of clinical decision support systems for breathlessness.NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Cardiopulmonary Point-of-Care Ultrasonography for Hospitalist Management of Undifferentiated Dyspnea.JAMA network open · 2025Trial
- Investigating a structured diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness in primary care: a mixed-methods feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial.BMJ open respiratory research · 2025Trial
- Using AI to determine optimal cost-effective diagnostic pathways for chronic breathlessness.NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2026Article
- A Bayesian network for identifying causes of breathlessness using a national electronic medical records (EMR) database.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Artificial intelligence enhanced contemporary pulmonary hypertension care.American heart journal plus : cardiology research and practice · 2025Review
- Age-adjusted natriuretic peptide thresholds for a diagnosis of heart failure in the community: Diagnostic accuracy study.ESC heart failure · 2025Article
- Assessment of breathlessness: a pulmonologist's perspective - short of breath, but not short of answers.Breathe (Sheffield, England) · 2025Review
- Associations of Serum Legumain with Severity and Prognosis Among Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients.International journal of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease · 2025Article
- ERS International Congress 2023: highlights from the Respiratory Clinical Care and Physiology Assembly.ERJ open research · 2024Article
- The Parallel World of Dyspnea: A Case Report.Cureus · 2024Article
- Our contribution to systematic review and meta-analysis in primary care respiratory medicine.NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2023Article
- "It's like a forgotten issue sometimes …": Qualitative study of individuals living and caring for people with chronic breathlessness.The clinical respiratory journal · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dyspnoea or breathlessness is a common presenting symptom among patients attending primary care services. This review aimed to determine whether there are clinical tools that can be incorporated into a clinical decision support system for primary care for efficient and accurate diagnosis of causes of chronic dyspnoea. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE and Google Scholar for all literature published between 1946 and 2020. Studies that evaluated a clinical algorithm for assessment of chronic dyspnoea in patients of any age group presenting to physicians with chronic dyspnoea were included. We identified 326 abstracts, 55 papers were reviewed, and eight included. A total 2026 patients aged between 20-80 years were included, 60% were women. The duration of dyspnoea was three weeks to 25 years. All studies undertook a stepwise or algorithmic approach to the assessment of dyspnoea. The results indicate that following history taking and physical examination, the first stage should include simply performed tests such as pulse oximetry, spirometry, and electrocardiography. If the patient remains undiagnosed, the second stage includes investigations such as chest x-ray, thyroid function tests, full blood count and NT-proBNP. In the third stage patients are referred for more advanced tests such as echocardiogram and thoracic CT. If dyspnoea remains unexplained, the fourth stage of assessment will require secondary care referral for more advanced diagnostic testing such as exercise tests. Utilising this proposed stepwise approach is expected to ascertain a cause for dyspnoea for 35% of the patients in stage 1, 83% by stage 3 and >90% of patients by stage 4.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.