Resp Care
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Mechanical ventilation technology has evolved rapidly over the last 30 years. One consequence is the creation of an unmanageable number of names to describe modes of ventilation. The proliferation of names makes education of end users difficult, potentially compromising the quality of patient care. ⋯ Survey results indicate that respondents were either familiar with or amenable to the previously published literature that the survey constructs represented. The degree of familiarity and concordance with these constructs represents a sufficient basis for attempting to formalize a taxonomy. Further analysis of the pattern of concordance among the constructs will inform future educational and consensus building efforts.
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For the busy clinician, educator, or manager, it is becoming an increasing challenge to filter the literature to what is relevant to one's practice and then update one's practice based on the current evidence. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature related to long-term oxygen therapy, pulmonary rehabilitation, airway management, acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory care education, and respiratory care management. These topics were chosen and reviewed in a manner that is most likely to have interest to the readers of Respiratory Care.
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Bronchial remodeling is currently known to affect not only patients with asthma, but also COPD patients. Some studies have demonstrated that basement membrane thickening and destruction of the bronchial epithelium are also found in COPD. The aim of the study was to compare the basement membrane thickness (BMT) and epithelial damage in biopsy specimens from patients with asthma and COPD. ⋯ BMT might be a histopathological parameter helpful in distinguishing asthma and COPD patients, whereas the extent and pattern of epithelial damage is not.
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Case Reports
Eosinophilic pneumonia associated with azacitidine in a patient with myelodysplastic syndrome.
Eosinophilic pneumonia is characterized by cough, lung infiltrates on imaging, and by the presence of eosinophils in the alveoli and pulmonary interstitium. Azacitidine, a pyramidine nucleoside analog of cytidine, is FDA approved for the treatment of various myelodysplastic syndromes. ⋯ Diagnosis of drug-induced eosinophilic pneumonia is established by having a temporal relationship between onset of symptoms and initiation of therapy, bronchoalveolar lavage or lung biopsy evidence of pulmonary eosinophilia, no other explanation for the disease, and improvement upon cessation of the offending agent. Our case illustrates the need for a high index of suspicion to identify adverse pulmonary reactions associated with newly developed medications.