Clinics in chest medicine
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Clinics in chest medicine · Dec 2014
ReviewClinical and biological heterogeneity in acute respiratory distress syndrome: direct versus indirect lung injury.
The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a heterogeneous group of illnesses affecting the pulmonary parenchyma with acute onset bilateral inflammatory pulmonary infiltrates with associated hypoxemia. ARDS occurs after 2 major types of pulmonary injury: direct lung injury affecting the lung epithelium or indirect lung injury disrupting the vascular endothelium. Greater understanding of the differences between direct and indirect lung injury may refine the classification of patients with ARDS and lead to development of new therapeutics targeted at specific subpopulations of patients with ARDS.
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Clinics in chest medicine · Dec 2014
ReviewEvolving epidemiology and definitions of the acute respiratory distress syndrome and early acute lung injury.
This article reviews the evolving definitions and epidemiology of the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and highlights current efforts to improve identification of high-risk patients, thus to target prevention and early treatment before progression to ARDS. This information will be important for general practitioners and intensivists interested in improving the care of patients at risk for ARDS, and clinical researchers interested in designing clinical trials targeting the prevention and early treatment of acute lung injury.
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Clinics in chest medicine · Dec 2014
ReviewObesity and nutrition in acute respiratory distress syndrome.
This article discusses obesity, its contribution to clinical outcomes, and the current literature on nutrition. More than one third of Americans are obese. Literature suggests that, among critically ill patients, the relationship between obesity and outcomes is complex. ⋯ Although obesity may confer greater morbidity in intensive care, it seems to decrease mortality. ARDS is a catabolic state; patients demonstrate a profound inflammatory response, multiple organ dysfunction, and hypermetabolism, often with malnutrition. The concept of pharmaconutrition has emerged.
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Clinics in chest medicine · Dec 2014
ReviewBeyond single-nucleotide polymorphisms: genetics, genomics, and other 'omic approaches to acute respiratory distress syndrome.
This article summarizes the contributions of high-throughput genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and gene expression investigations to the understanding of inherited or acquired risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although not yet widely applied to a complex trait like ARDS, these techniques are now routinely used to study a variety of disease states. Omic applications hold great promise for identifying novel factors that may contribute to ARDS pathophysiology or may be appropriate for further development as biomarkers or surrogates in clinical studies. Opportunities and challenges of different techniques are discussed, and examples of successful applications in non-ARDS fields are used to illustrate the potential use of each technique.
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Clinics in chest medicine · Sep 2014
ReviewCongenital central hypoventilation syndrome: a neurocristopathy with disordered respiratory control and autonomic regulation.
Congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS), a rare neurocristopathy with disordered respiratory control, is characterized by alveolar hypoventilation and diffuse autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysregulation. Mutations in the paired-like homeobox 2B (PHOX2B) are causative, leading to physiologic ANS dysregulation and pathologic abnormalities. ⋯ Breathing complications occur despite the lungs and airways being normal. Disordered respiratory control demonstrated by absent or severely attenuated ventilatory, behavioral, and arousal responses to both endogenous and exogenous hypoxemia and hypercarbia results in severe physiologic compromise.