Clinical physiology and functional imaging
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Clin Physiol Funct Imaging · Jan 2018
A spiky pattern in the course of electrical thoracic impedance as a very early sign of a developing pneumothorax.
A pneumothorax (PTX) is a potentially lethal condition in high-risk intensive care patients. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has been proven to detect PTX at the bedside. A so far not described pattern in the course of thoracic impedance at an early state of PTX was observed in a pig model of ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) used for a more extensive study. ⋯ After application of VILI ventilation (38 ml kg-1 ), a PTX developed slowly, being confirmed by a continuous increase in the end-expiratory level on the right side and diverging levels of +0·320 ± 0·057 (right) and -0·193 ± 0·147 (left) at full manifestation. We assume that spikes reflect a temporary change in the electrical pathway caused by leakage into the pleural cavity. This newly described phenomenon of spikes is considered to be a potentially useful indicator for a very early detection of an evolving PTX in high-risk ICU patients.
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Clin Physiol Funct Imaging · Jan 2018
The multi-ethnic global lung initiative 2012 and Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reference values do not reflect spirometric measurements in Black boys and men from Tanzania.
The interpretation of spirometric results of Black Africans according to reference standards based on data from outside their native environment may lead to the wrong conclusions. This article aims to characterize the ventilatory capacity of boys and men from Tanzania according to forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1 ), forced vital capacity (FVC), peak expiratory flow (PEF) and FEV1 /FVC based on the collected anthropological material and to compare them to NHANES III, Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) African American predicted values and GLI2012 equations. The analysis included spirometric measurements of n = 295 participants from Tanzania. ⋯ All the spirometric measurements included in the analysis were statistically significantly correlated with age, body height, sitting height, trunk length and body weight. The application of prediction formulae developed for non-African populations overestimates the values for Black Africans. The results of spirometric measurements are ecosensitive and dependent on various external (environmental) factors.