The clinical respiratory journal
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Baseline clinical and physiological variables have been described as relevant predictors of survival among patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). However, substantial heterogeneity in both survival time and mortality has been observed with many of these predictive factors. The incidence and mortality rates of IPF vary from country to country, with race potentially contributing to such variations. ⋯ Finger clubbing is a significant predictive variable and was associated with a 5-fold increase in mortality. Other baseline demographic characteristics as well as pulmonary function tests were not predictive of prognosis in Middle Eastern patients with IPF. It appears that IPF patients of Middle Eastern descent have a longer median survival curve compared to other races.
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Some patients cannot perform forced vital capacity (FVC). We conducted a study to answer three questions: Can the ability to perform components of spirometry be predicted by the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE)? What proportion of subjects can perform forced expiratory volume in 3 s (FEV3) but not FVC? Does the forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)/FEV3 ratio concord with FEV1/FVC ratio in patients with airflow obstruction? ⋯ Patients with an MMSE < 24 are usually unable to reach FVC reliably when tested on a single occasion, but some can reach FEV3. Patients with MMSE < 20 cannot do spirometry. An FEV1/FEV3 ratio < 80% can be used to help identify patients with airflow obstruction if they are unable to perform full spirometry to FVC.
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Quantifying the prevalence of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and restrictive pulmonary diseases in Norway is needed to document the burden of chronic respiratory inflammatory diseases on disability, health care costs and impaired quality of life. To introduce effective interventions for prevention, cure and care, there is a prerequisite to know the environmental causes. Furthermore, using relevant and precise phenotypes from community-based studies are important for detecting molecular-genetic causes for diseases. ⋯ Great challenges for future population-based studies are (i) to keep the participation rates high in community studies; (ii) to standardise the basic clinical-epidemiological methods over decades of follow-up and to systematically transfer these methods into new populations with different languages and cultures and (iii) to focus on important research questions on respiratory health for the community.
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Comparative Study
Long-term effects of a preoperative smoking cessation programme.
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Increased exhaled nitrite in children with allergic asthma is not related to nitric oxide formation.
Nitrite sampled from the upper airways could originate from inflammation-induced nitric oxide (NO), as reports of elevated nitrite in exhaled breath condensate (EBC) from asthmatics suggest, but also through bacterial action in the pharyngo-oral tract. ⋯ EBC nitrite is elevated in childhood asthma but the lack of correlation to FENO and other markers, together with simultaneously normal levels of nitrate, make its origin as a metabolite of inflammation-induced NO questionable.