Selecting the Right Patient: The Achilles Heel of COPD Clinical Trials

Many clinical trials with negative results have led to the exclusion of potentially beneficial drugs for the treatment of COPD. Thus, careful consideration of the target population must be paid before ruling out the efficacy of such drugs. In the era of precision medicine, the goal of improving clinical outcomes for individual patients on the basis of the pathobiological mechanism (i.e., endotypes) should be prioritized over the selection of patients falling under the general umbrella diagnosis of “COPD.”