Chest
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients with Systemic Rheumatic Disease: a multicenter study.
Patients with systemic rheumatic diseases (SRDs) may require ICU management for SRD exacerbation or treatment-related infections or toxicities. ⋯ In patients with SRDs, critical care management is mostly needed only in patients with a previously known SRD; however, diagnosis can be made in the ICU for 12% of patients. Infection and SRD exacerbation account for more than two-thirds of these situations, both targeting chiefly the lungs. Direct admission to the ICU may improve outcomes.
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Mortality caused by acute cardiopulmonary disease is decreasing, and in many countries the population is aging rapidly. Yet, the life-years gained are often spent with multiple chronic and slowly progressive conditions, and this particularly applies to patients with cardiopulmonary disease. Affected individuals often have multiple diagnoses related to the cardiopulmonary-metabolic axis with accelerated aging and gradually progressive failure of organs that provide the body with oxygen and nutrients. ⋯ Thus, novel research approaches are needed to better guide evidence-based clinical practice. These approaches include the construction of diagnostic models to predict the presence of multiple diseases simultaneously, individual patient data meta-analysis as a method to examine variation in the effects of treatments or diagnostic tests depending on comorbidity, and the construction of therapeutic prediction models that predict the therapeutic effect of drugs based on the presence (or absence) of relevant comorbidity. We argue that multimorbidity should be regarded as a "friend" and not as a "foe" in clinical research addressing the current clinical problems in daily practice.
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Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) has a high prevalence in sarcoidosis. This high prevalence may be the result of increased upper airways resistance from sarcoidosis of the upper respiratory tract, corticosteroid-induced obesity, or parenchymal lung involvement from sarcoidosis. OSA is a form of SDB that is particularly common in patients with sarcoidosis. ⋯ Management of OSA in sarcoidosis is problematic because corticosteroid treatment of sarcoidosis may worsen OSA. Aggressive efforts should be made to place the patient on the lowest effective dose of corticosteroids, which involves early consideration of corticosteroid-sparing agents. Because of the significant morbidity associated with SDB, early recognition and treatment of SDB in patients with sarcoidosis may improve their overall quality of life.