Towards Optimum Reporting of Pulmonary Effectiveness Databases and Outcomes (TORPEDO): identifying a core dataset for asthma and COPD studies

Purpose: There remains a need for a standardized dataset for respiratory studies to accelerate data collection, improve research efficiency and aid the sharing, merging and comparison of datasets. This TORPEDO (Towards Optimum Reporting of Pulmonary Effectiveness Databases and Outcomes) project aimed to develop a checklist of optimum and minimum variables for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) research. Methods: A 3-phase modified Delphi survey was conducted: in phase 1, an expert panel generated a list of variables, in phase 2 a Delphi panel selected the minimum variables (>66% agreement) for any design and in phase 3 they were asked to select a minimum set for specific study designs. Results: In phase 1 the expert panel (n=22) proposed 224 variables. In phase 2, voting by 64 participants resulted in consensus (>66% agreement) for 18 variables and partial agreement (50-66%) for 44 variables, following this, 5 technical variables (e.g. date of test) were removed. In phase 3, 34 members of the Delphi panel completed voting; consensus was reached for 13 variables for retrospective asthma studies and 34 for prospective asthma studies. For COPD, there were 16 variables for retrospective studies and 37 for prospective studies. Gender, asthma/COPD exacerbations and patient-reported outcomes were the only variables with 100% agreement for both asthma and COPD studies. Conclusion: The proposed list of minimally required variables will allow the assessment of current data sources for their utility in asthma and COPD studies, facilitate the merging of datasets, aid standardization of data collection and improve research efficiency.