Investigació Aplicada en Malalties Respiratòries

Antoni Torres

Coordinator and Team Leader
atorres(ELIMINAR)@ub.edu

Professor in Medicine at the University of Barcelona (UB). He is considered a physician of reference both nationally and internationally in lung infections, including pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis, immunocompromised patients, weaning, noninvasive ventilation (NIV), and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS-ALI). He has published more than 200 original articles, he has an accumulated impact factor of more than 1390 and his published articles have received approximately 13,000 citations. He leads the research group on Management and prevention of infectious, interstitial and tumoral lung diseases of the August Pi i Sunyer Institute of Biomedical Research (IDIBAPS), from where he facilitates translational research studies.

He has taken part in more than 70 projects - 39 as principal researcher - and 27 studies of the Health Care Research Fund (FIS). His research receives support from many public bodies, including the following: Carlos III Health Institute (ISCII), CibeRes, IDIBAPS, and the European Union. He is currently involved in more than 30 national, European and other international projects. He coordinates a CIBER group on respiratory diseases (CibeRes) and takes part in the European projects, GRACE, MOSAR (WP3, WP4) and Theraedge.

This team mainly investigates community-acquired and intrahospital respiratory infections. The aim is to answer questions arising from clinical observation of patients that are not in the literature and to obtain results that can be quickly applied to patient care in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of nosocomial pneumonia. The team also studies community-acquired respiratory infections, from where they approach important questions such as the decision to admit to hospital, the decision to admit to the intensive care unit (ICU), microbial etiology, diagnostic tests and the most appropriate treatment to use. Other central study topics include noninvasive ventilation for the treatment of severe acute respiratory failure and weaning from artificial ventilation. At the same time, an animal model of severe pneumonia has been developed that allows trans-species research.

The research group is characterized by the utility of its results and their impact on clinical practice. For example, it has described measures for preventing nosocomial pneumonia and criteria for admitting patients to the ICU in community-acquired pneumonia, which have been adopted universally. The group’s studies on noninvasive ventilation have meant that this technique can be applied to patients with severe respiratory failure and extrapolate it to routine clinical practice. It is research aimed at improving clinical practice and quality of patient care.