Chest
-
To evaluate the practice of using nasopharyngoscopy without routine fiberoptic bronchoscopy for children presenting to a pediatric pulmonary practice with nonspecific noisy breathing. ⋯ Nasopharyngoscopy without lower airway endoscopy can be used safely for the initial evaluation of noisy breathing in infants and children provided excellent follow-up is available.
-
To prospectively study all patients with COPD and spontaneous pneumothorax (SP) who underwent thoracoscopic talc poudrage (TP) under local anesthesia to determine its efficacy and safety in recurrence prevention. ⋯ Thoracoscopic TP is effective for pneumothorax prevention and can be performed with acceptable mortality in patients with advanced COPD.
-
To study the effect of the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in the development of elastase-induced emphysema in rats. ⋯ Consistent with the results of anatomic, pathologic, and functional studies, NAC is able to attenuate the lesions induced by elastase in rats, which is in accordance with previous data supporting the idea that oxidant injury could contribute to the development of elastase-induced emphysema.
-
To determine under what circumstances the use of mechanical insufflation-exsufflation (MI-E) can generate clinically effective expiratory flows for airway clearance (> 2.7 L/s) for clinically stable patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ⋯ MI-E is able to generate clinically effective PCFMI-E (> 2.7 L/s) for stable patients with ALS, except for those with bulbar dysfunction who also have a MIC > 1 L and PCFMIC <2.7 L/s who probably have severe dynamic collapse of the upper airways during the exsufflation cycle. Clinically stable patients with mild respiratory dysfunction and PCFMIC > 4 L/s might not benefit from MI-E except during an acute respiratory illness.
-
Women who smoke have a higher rate of fatal breast cancer than nonsmoking women. An association between smoking and pulmonary metastases from breast cancer has been suggested by epidemiologic studies. ⋯ Cigarette smoke exposure is associated with an increase in the total pulmonary metastatic burden in this murine model of metastatic mammary cell cancer. This study provides experimental support for an adverse effect of smoking on the metastatic process and suggests a possible mechanism for smokers' increased breast cancer mortality.