Revue des maladies respiratoires
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To examine three typical disease states seen in intensive care, sepsis, Fulminant purpura and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) to assess the implication of cytokines in their pathogenesis and particularly in the clinical applications of possible cytokine inhibitors. ⋯ Future clinical strategies designed to combat. Future clinical strategies designed to fight against the most critical diseases in intensive care medicine require some use of any kind of immunotherapy. In animal studies, convincing data are available showing that immunotherapy improves the prognosis of sepsis, whereas in humans, to date, the results appear to be deceiving. Future research in this direction is mandatory, in sepsis and in other disease states, like ARDS, because no other hope for treating these patients seems to appear in a near future.
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After having invented the stethoscope, Laennec published his treatise on auscultation in 1819, describing the acoustic events generated by ventilation and linking them with anatomopathological findings. The weak points of his semiology lay in its subjective and interpretative character, expressed by an imprecise and picturesque nomenclature. Technical studies of breath sounds began in the middle of the twentieth century, and this enabled the American Thoracic Society to elaborate a new classification of adventitious noises based on a few physical characteristics. ⋯ Technology development raises hope for the design, in near future, of automatic processes for respiratory noise detection and classification. Systematic research into the production mechanisms and sites of these noises has progressed equally. It should, in time, reinforce their semiological value and give to auscultation, either instrumental or using the stethoscope or instrumentally, an increased diagnostic power and the status of respiratory function test.
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Mechanical ventilation may have adverse effects on the lung. The appearance of extra-alveolar air, either as a pneumothorax or as subcutaneous emphysema along with other manifestations, is a complication of barotrauma which has been known for a long time. Recent experimental studies have clearly shown that mechanical ventilation can also lead to alterations in the blood gas barrier. ⋯ These anomalies are made as a result of pulmonary distension and not as a result of elevated pressures in the airways, thus justifying the term "volume traumatism". The existence of previous acute pulmonary injury considerably worsens the deleterious pulmonary effect of mechanical ventilation. Although the direct clinical implications of these experimental studies are difficult to confirm, these latter have nevertheless lead to profound changes in ventilatory strategy during the course of acute pulmonary disease such as the adult respiratory distress syndrome.
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Bronchiolitis obliterans is an anatomical lesion with multiple aetiologies. In the lung transplant patient the pure forms of bronchiolitis obliterans are probably the consequence of a process of chronic rejection; in fact necropsy tissue or lungs removed which have been transplanted show that the lesions of bronchiolitis obliterans are often associated with parenchymal disorders, vascular and proximal bronchial disease, which are sequelae of phenomena of rejection or infection. The effect of bronchiolitis obliterans on lung function is constant; this may appear progressively or in stages. ⋯ It is exceptional to achieve the diagnosis of bronchiolitis obliterans from the examination of a transbronchial biopsy. It is a combination of features, both clinical and respiratory function, negative bacteriology and virological investigations as well as the absence of any efficacy of conventional treatment for rejection which leads to the diagnosis. In certain cases the question of a pulmonary re-transplantation is raised.