Practical approach lung health-global alliance against chronic respiratory diseases (PAL-GARD) initiative in Brazil.

Background: To evaluate the impact of training primary care physicians (PCPs) in the use of the practical approach lung health-global alliance against chronic respiratory diseases (PAL-GARD) upon their diagnostic skills.

Methods: In this real-life three-phase study, PCPs were allocated to a PAL-GARD training or control group. Patients who sought a primary care health facility due to cough, dyspnea and/or wheezing were eligible. The clinical diagnoses made by PCPs during the baseline and post-intervention phase were audited by a panel of pulmonologists. Kappa inter-rater statistics was used to compare agreement between PCPs and pulmonologists.

Results: Thirty PCPs evaluated 536 patients, 358 in the intervention and 178 in the control group. According to Kappa, there was an increase in the agreement in the diagnosis of asthma (from 0.546 to 0.638), tuberculosis (from 0.393 to 0.655) and acute respiratory infections (ARI) (from 0.577 to 0.584) was observed in the PAL-GARD group, but there was a reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (from 0.430 to 0.284).

Conclusions: In this setting, PAL-GARD-based guide and training improved the clinical diagnosis of common respiratory diseases with the exception of COPD.