Respiratory medicine
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Respiratory medicine · Oct 2011
ReviewPulmonary-renal syndromes: an update for respiratory physicians.
Pulmonary-renal syndromes are a group of disorders characterised by necrotising glomerulonephritis and pulmonary haemorrhage. Small vessel systemic vasculitis is the most common cause of pulmonary-renal syndromes presenting to respiratory physicians. Rarer causes include systemic lupus erythematosus and connective tissue diseases though severe pneumonia or cardiac failure may mimic their presentation. ⋯ The European Vasculitis Study Group (EUVAS) have recently formulated guidelines to provide consensus on diagnosis and management in this area and work to define survival rates in these conditions with longer term follow-up studies is ongoing. This review summarises the current aetiopathogenesis thought to underlie these complex diseases, the diagnostic definitions and classification criteria currently in use and the evidence base for modern therapies. Though unusual for respiratory specialists to coordinate overall management of these patients, an update on their current management is regarded as important to their practice given the recently changing trends in treatments.
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Respiratory medicine · Oct 2011
The accuracy and efficiency of electronic screening for recruitment into a clinical trial on COPD.
Participant recruitment is an important process in successful conduct of randomized controlled trials. To facilitate enrollment into a National Institutes of Health-sponsored clinical trial involving patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), we developed and prospectively validated an automated electronic screening tool based on boolean free-text search of admission notes in electronic medical records. During a 2-week validation period, all patients admitted to prespecified general medical services were screened for eligibility by both the electronic screening tool and a COPD nurse. ⋯ Compared with traditional manual screening, electronic screening demonstrated time-saving potential of 76%. Thus, the electronic screening tool accurately identifies potential study subjects and improves efficiency of patient accrual for a clinical trial on COPD. This method may be expanded into other institutional and clinical settings.
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Respiratory medicine · Oct 2011
Multicenter StudyQuality of spirometry tests performed by 9893 adults in 14 countries: the BOLD Study.
to determine the ability of participants in the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study to meet quality goals for spirometry test session quality and to assess factors contributing to good quality. ⋯ Quality goals for spirometry tests were met about 90% of the time in these population-based samples of adults from several countries.
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Respiratory medicine · Oct 2011
Comparative StudyCardiopulmonary response to exercise in patients with liver cirrhosis and impaired pulmonary gas exchange.
Maximal exercise capacity and pulmonary gas exchange are both commonly impaired in liver cirrhosis. Apart from rare cases of hepatopulmonary syndrome, it is still unknown whether these moderate pulmonary gas exchange abnormalities can alter aerobic capacity of cirrhotic patients. Resting pulmonary function tests and symptom-limited cardiopulmonary exercise testing were prospectively investigated in 30 patients with liver cirrhosis exhibiting a widened alveolar-arterial oxygen gradient (P(A-a)O(2) > 30 mm Hg at peak exercise) without pulmonary vascular dilatations at contrast-enhanced echocardiography. ⋯ VO(2)max correlates negatively with V(D)/V(T)max (r(2) = 0.36; p < 0.0001). There were no differences in cardiac or metabolic response to exercise between groups. Taken together these findings suggest that clinically undetectable pulmonary vascular disorders can slightly contribute to further reduce exercise capacity of cirrhotic patients.
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Respiratory medicine · Oct 2011
Comparative StudyA comparative study on endobronchial ultrasound-guided and fluoroscopic-guided transbronchial lung biopsy of peripheral pulmonary lesions.
Bronchoscopic lung biopsy using fluoroscopic guidance is the standard procedure for the diagnosis of peripheral pulmonary lesions. Peripheral lesions can also be biopsied using endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) guidance, which is equally effective and does not expose the patient or staff to radiation. ⋯ The results of our study showed that the diagnostic yield was similar between EBUS- and fluoroscopy-guided BLB, although our findings suggest that more positive outcomes are expected with EBUS. The EBUS procedure is safer because it does not involve exposure of the patient or medical staff to radiation.