Chest
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This overview will demonstrate that cough is a common and potentially expensive health-care problem. Improvement in the quality of care of those with cough has been the focus of study for a variety of disciplines in medicine. The purpose of the Cough Guideline and Expert Panel is to synthesize current knowledge in a form that will aid clinical decision-making for the diagnosis and management of cough across disciplines and also identify gaps in knowledge and treatment options.
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Advances in critical care practice have led to a substantial decline in the incidence of ARDS over the past several years. Low tidal volume ventilation, timely resuscitation and antimicrobial administration, restrictive transfusion practices, and primary prevention of aspiration and nosocomial pneumonia have likely contributed to this reduction. Despite decades of research, there is no proven pharmacologic treatment of ARDS, and mortality from ARDS remains high. ⋯ Prediction scores have been developed to identify patients at risk for ARDS, and clinical trials testing aspirin and inhaled budesonide/formoterol for ARDS prevention are ongoing. Future trials aimed at preventing ARDS face several key challenges. ARDS has not been validated as an end point for pivotal clinical trials, and caution is needed when testing toxic therapies that may prevent ARDS yet potentially increase mortality.
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Ischemic events (IEs) and intracranial hemorrhages (ICHs) are feared complications of atrial fibrillation (AF) and of antithrombotic treatment in patients with these conditions. ⋯ IEs occurred mainly in elderly patients who received ASA or no treatment. One-half of patients with IEs receiving anticoagulant treatment had subtherapeutic INRs. Therapeutic approaches to elderly subjects with AF require an effective anticoagulant treatment strategy.
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The surviving sepsis guidelines recommend early aggressive fluid resuscitation within 6 h of sepsis onset. Although rapid fluid administration may offer benefit, studies on the timing of resuscitation are lacking. We hypothesized that there is an association between quicker, adequate fluid resuscitation and patient outcome from sepsis onset time. ⋯ Earlier fluid resuscitation (within the first 3 h) is associated with a greater number of survivors with severe sepsis and septic shock.
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Definitive diagnosis of pleural disease (particularly malignancy) depends upon histologic proof obtained via pleural biopsy or positive pleural fluid cytology. Image-guided sampling is now standard practice. Local anesthetic thoracoscopy has a high diagnostic yield for malignant and nonmalignant disease, but is not always possible in frail patients, if pleural fluid is heavily loculated, or where the lung is adherent to the chest wall. Such cases can be converted during the same procedure as attempted thoracoscopy to cutting-needle biopsy. This study aimed to determine the diagnostic yield of a physician-led service in both planned biopsies and cases of failed thoracoscopy. ⋯ Within this population, physician-based, ultrasound-guided, cutting-needle pleural biopsy obtained pleural tissue successfully in a high proportion of cases, including those of failed thoracoscopy.