Patients used a number of different strategies to cope with episodic breathlessness, adding more detailed understanding of existing strategies for breathlessness. The findings, therefore, may provide a valuable aid for health care providers, affected patients, and their relatives.

The unpredictability of unpredictable breathless episodes refers to the patients' experience that these episodes occur "out-of-the-blue." However, a known trigger can be identified for the majority of unpredictable breathless episodes. These are therefore triggered as well. Further research needs to describe more possible triggers, to inquire the prevalence of unpredictable episodic breathlessness, and to develop effective management strategies.

No abstract

Conflicts of interest and sources of funding: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. This study has been supported by SOFIE by the provision of precursors for FAPI synthesis. A.D. discloses research support from Siemens Healthineers, Life Molecular Imaging, GE Healthcare, AVID Radiopharmaceuticals, SOFIE and Eisai; Speaker Honorary and/or Advisory Boards fees from Siemens Healthineers, Sanofi, GE Healthcare, Biogen, Novo Nordisk; Invicro Stock from Siemens Healthineers, Lantheus Holding, and a patent pending for 18 F-PSMA7 (PSMA PET imaging tracer). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent to undergo imaging and RT was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The local institutional review board waived requirement to obtain consent for retrospective data analysis.