BMC pulmonary medicine
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BMC pulmonary medicine · Mar 2015
Validation of overnight oximetry to diagnose patients with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea.
Polysomnography (PSG) is treated as the gold standard for diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). However, it is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive. This study evaluates validity of overnight pulse oximetry as a diagnostic tool for moderate to severe OSA patients. ⋯ Overnight pulse oximetry provides satisfactory diagnostic performance in detecting severe OSA patients. Home-styled oximetry may be a tool for severe OSA diagnosis.
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BMC pulmonary medicine · Mar 2015
Observational StudyAlbumin rather than C-reactive protein may be valuable in predicting and monitoring the severity and course of acute respiratory distress syndrome in critically ill patients with or at risk for the syndrome after new onset fever.
We studied the value of routine biochemical variables albumin, C-reactive protein (CRP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) to improve prediction and monitoring of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) severity in the intensive care unit. ⋯ Overall, albumin may be of greater value than CRP in predicting and monitoring the severity and course of ARDS in critically patients with or at risk for the syndrome after new onset fever. Albumin levels below 20 g/L as well as a decline over a week are associated with ARDS of increasing severity, irrespective of its definition. LDH levels predicted 28-day mortality.
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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.
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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.
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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.