Chest
-
Advanced interventional pulmonary procedures of the airways, pleural space, and mediastinum continue to evolve and be refined. Health care, finance, and clinical professionals are challenged by both the indications and related coding complexities. ⋯ We describe advanced bronchoscopic procedures, appropriate Current Procedural Terminology coding, valuations, and necessary modifiers to fill the knowledge gap between basic and advanced procedural coding. Our approach is to balance the description of procedures with the associated coding in a way that is of use to the proceduralist, the coding specialist, and other nonclinical professionals.
-
Disorders of arousal (DoA) and sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy (SHE) are sleep-related events characterized by complex, often bizarre, and violent behaviors. DoA are involuntary motor manifestations of various complexities occurring during incomplete awakening from non-rapid eye movement sleep. SHE is a focal epilepsy characterized by stereotyped hyperkinetic or/and asymmetric tonic/dystonic seizures usually arising from non-rapid eye movement sleep. ⋯ The worldwide availability of homemade video recordings has increased the possibility of adding more objective information to the clinical history alone. The confirmed diagnosis relies on video-polysomnographic recording although it requires time, economic resources, and specific skills for the analysis. In this review we propose a simple diagnostic algorithm for the differential diagnosis between DoA and SHE in adults, based on the most updated knowledge, from the simpler tool to the most specific and tailored one.
-
Review Meta Analysis
Breathlessness predicts survival in patients with malignant pleural effusions: Meta-analysis of individual patient data from five randomized controlled trials.
Patients with malignant pleural effusions (MPEs) experience breathlessness and poor survival. Breathlessness is associated with poor survival in other conditions. ⋯ Breathlessness, measured using VASD at baseline and postprocedure, is a predictor of survival in patients with MPE.