Advances in respiratory medicine
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Acute eosinophilic pneumonia (AEP) is characterized by an acute onset respiratory illness with bilateral chest infiltrates and evidence of pulmonary eosinophilia. Cigarette smoking is the main risk factor, but drugs and other inhalational exposures have also been reported. Herein, the association between AEP and smoking devices other than cigarettes is reviewed The PubMed database was searched using terms such as "smoking", "vaping", "e-cigarette", "waterpipe", and "marijuana", along with other commonly used synonyms for these terms. ⋯ Five patients (41.6%) required invasive mechanical ventilation and ten patients (83.3%) were treated in an intensive care unit. All patients responded to corticosteroid therapy with no relapses reported. Acute eosinophilic pneumonia is reported with smoking that does not include traditional cigarette smoking such as waterpipes, e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn cigarettes, and marijuana and can have asimilar presentation and clinical course.
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Fulminant pulmonary embolism (PE) may lead to cardiogenic shock or cardiac arrest with high mortality rates (65%) despite treatment with thrombolysis. Patients not responding to this therapy might benefit from extracorporeal life support (ECLS). Only occasional case reports of ECLS in PE patients are available. We studied the use of ECLS after thrombolysis in patients suffering from refractory cardiogenic shock due to PE. ⋯ ECLS may be considered as abailout therapy in PE patients not responding to prior definitive treatment such as thrombolysis. ECLS therapy seems to be feasible with an acceptable complication rate even after thrombolysis.