BMC pulmonary medicine
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Jan 2015
Multicenter Study Observational StudyCharacterisation and prognosis of undiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients at their first hospitalisation.
Under-diagnosis of COPD is an important unmet medical need. We investigated the characteristics and prognosis of hospitalised patients with undiagnosed COPD. ⋯ Undiagnosed COPD patients have less severe disease and lower risk of re-hospitalisation when compared with hospitalised patients with known COPD.
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Jan 2015
Comparative StudyA comparison of visual and quantitative methods to identify interstitial lung abnormalities.
Evidence suggests that individuals with interstitial lung abnormalities (ILA) on a chest computed tomogram (CT) may have an increased risk to develop a clinically significant interstitial lung disease (ILD). Although methods used to identify individuals with ILA on chest CT have included both automated quantitative and qualitative visual inspection methods, there has been not direct comparison between these two methods. To investigate this relationship, we created lung density metrics and compared these to visual assessments of ILA. ⋯ Our findings demonstrate that increased measures of lung density may be helpful in determining the severity of lung volume reduction, but alone, are not strongly predictive of ILA defined by visual assessment. Moreover, HAAs were not associated with MUC5B promoter genotype.
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Jan 2015
Sudden death in young persons with uncontrolled asthma--a nationwide cohort study in Denmark.
Asthma is a common chronic disease among young adults, and several studies have reported increased mortality rates in patients with asthma. However, no study has described sudden unexpected death in a nationwide setting in patients with uncontrolled asthma. We defined uncontrolled asthma as a previous hospital admittance because of asthma (of any severity) or when asthma was considered to have influenced the death according to the death certificate. The purpose of this study is to increase the medical focus on young persons with uncontrolled asthma and thereby hopefully aid in preventing sudden unexpected deaths. We therefore aimed to describe clinical characteristics, symptoms, causes of death, and contact with the healthcare system prior to sudden unexpected death in young persons with uncontrolled asthma. ⋯ The cause of death was predominantly sudden cardiac death followed by fatal asthma attack. We found that 41 (84%) of patients suffered from symptoms prior to death and that 28 (57%) sought medical advice from the emergency department and/or general practitioners.
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Jan 2015
Change in forced vital capacity and associated subsequent outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a rare and serious disease characterized by progressive lung-function loss. Limited evidence has been published on the impact of lung-function loss on subsequent patient outcomes. This study examined change in forced vital capacity (FVC) across IPF patients in the 6 months after diagnosis and its association with clinical and healthcare resource utilization (HRU) outcomes in a real-world setting in the U.S. ⋯ These findings suggest that nearly half of IPF patients experienced decline in FVC% within ~6 months following IPF diagnosis. Greater FVC% decline was associated with an increased risk of further IPF progression, suspected AEx, mortality, and higher rate of HRU. Management options that slow FVC decline may help improve future health outcomes in IPF.
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Jan 2015
Prognostic value of extravascular lung water assessed with lung ultrasound score by chest sonography in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome.
The prognostic value of extravascular lung water indices (EVLWI) has been widely investigated, which is determined by lung ultrasound B-lines. However, the clinical value of lung ultrasound B-lines for determining prognosis/intensive care unit (ICU) outcomes in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has been rarely reported. ⋯ Lung ultrasonography is a non-invasive, economic, simple, user-friendly, and radiation-free bedside method for predicting the prognosis of ARDS patients. Early measurement of LUS is a better prognostic indicator in patients with ARDS.