Chest
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Interstitial lung abnormalities (ILA) may represent undiagnosed early-stage or subclinical interstitial lung disease (ILD). ILA are often observed incidentally in patients who subsequently develop clinically overt ILD. There is limited information on consensus definitions for, and the appropriate evaluation of, ILA. Early recognition of patients with ILD remains challenging, yet critically important. Expert consensus could inform early recognition and referral. ⋯ Guidance was established for identifying clinically relevant ILA, subsequent referral, and follow-up. These results lay the foundation for developing practical guidance on managing patients with ILA.
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Multicenter Study
Understanding patients' perceived health after critical illness: analysis of two prospective, longitudinal studies of ARDS survivors.
Perceived health is one of the strongest determinants of subjective well-being, but it has received little attention among survivors of ARDS. ⋯ About half of survivors of ARDS showed clinically important differences in actual perceived health vs predicted perceived health based on self-reported measures of functioning. Survivors of ARDS demographic features, comorbidities, and severity of illness were correlated only weakly with perceived health after controlling for measures of perceived functioning, highlighting the challenge of predicting how individual patients will respond psychologically to new impairments after critical illness.
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Asthma-COPD overlap (ACO) is a heterogeneous condition that describes patients who show persistent airflow limitation with clinical features that support both asthma and COPD. Although no single consensus definition exists to diagnose this entity, common major criteria include a strong bronchodilator reversibility or bronchial hyperreactivity, a physician diagnosis of asthma, and a ≥ 10-pack-year cigarette smoking history. The prevalence of ACO ranges from 0.9% to 11.1% in the general population, depending on the diagnostic definition used. ⋯ For treatment options, the population with ACO historically has been excluded from therapeutic trials; therefore strong, evidence-based recommendations are lacking beyond first-line inhaler therapies. Advanced therapies in patients with ACO are selected according to disease phenotypes and are based on extrapolated data from asthma and COPD. Research focused on defining biomarkers and evidence-based treatment options for ACO is needed urgently.
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Although long neglected, the right side of the heart (RH) is now widely accepted as a pivotal player in heart failure (HF) either with reduced or preserved ejection fraction. The chronic overload of the pulmonary microcirculation results in an initial phase characterized by right ventricular (RV) hypertrophy, right atrial dilation, and diastolic dysfunction. This progresses to overt RH failure when RV dilation and systolic dysfunction lead to RV-pulmonary arterial (RV-PA) uncoupling with low RV output. ⋯ Assessments simultaneously should encompass RV systolic function, pulmonary pressures, an estimation of RV-PA coupling, and RH morphologic features. Despite a large volume of evidence indicating the relevance of RH function to the clinical syndrome of HF, evidence-based management strategies are lacking. Targeting RH dysfunction in HF should be an objective of future investigations, being an unmet need in the current management of HF.