The range of clinical conditions included under the umbrella of “respiratory medicine” is wide. From cancers to obstructive sleep apnoea, interstitial lung disease to airways disease, occupational lung disease to respiratory infections, there is a variety present in respiratory medicine not seen in other hospital based specialties. This diversity makes respiratory medicine a deeply rewarding specialty in which to work, but also means that it is not easy to quantify the full impact of lung disease on the health of the British public.

For this reason, the British Thoracic Society has produced the second edition of “The Burden of Lung Disease” which includes a number of statistics that may be startling to the casual reader and of interest to those involved in resource allocation in the NHS.¹ For example, of the 580 000 deaths each year in the UK, one in five is due to respiratory disease with 35 000 deaths from lung cancer, 34 000 from pneumonia, and 27 000 from COPD. Respiratory disease now accounts for more than 845 000 hospital admissions each year and is second only to injury and poisoning as a cause of emergency admission to hospital. Asthma remains the …