Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine
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In the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchodilators such as long acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) and long acting β agonist(LABA) play key roles for improving respiratory function and symptoms, and reducing risk of exacerbation. However, inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), a key medicine for bronchial asthma, is limitedly used in COPD treatment. ⋯ Therefore, ICS/LABA or ICS/LAMA should be prescribed to those overlapped patients. Concentration of exhaled nitrogen oxide and percentage of peripheral eosinophil may be good biomarkers for discriminating the COPD patients who have good response to ICS treatment.
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Several non-surgical and minimally invasive bronchoscopic interventions, such as bronchoscopic lung volume reduction (BLVR) techniques, have been developed to treat patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). BLVR has been studied for treatment in severe COPD patients with emphysema. BLVR with one-way endobronchial valves is reported to be effective for patients with a heterogeneous emphysema distribution and without inter-lobar collateral ventilation. ⋯ Targeted lung denervation(TLD) is a novel bronchoscopic intervention based on ablation of parasympathetic nerves surrounding the main bronchi. TLD seems to be effective for COPD with chronic bronchitis phenotype. This review gives a general overview of BLVR with one-way valve and lung volume reduction coil, and TLD.
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Asthma and COPD, once regarded as distinct disease entities, often overlaps especially in the elderly and smokers. GINA/GOLD joint document 2014 has proposed a clinical entity of ACOS (asthma-COPD overlap syndrome) characterized by irreversible airflow limitation with clinical features of both asthma and COPD, although evidences for definite diagnosis and treatment are limited. ACOS includes several different phenotypes such as severe asthma with airway remodeling, incomplete airflow reversibility as a consequence of childhood asthma and smoking, eosinophilic phenotype of COPD, and so on. Considering the therapeutic modalities currently available for asthma and COPD, it is important to identify the patients who respond well to inhaled corticosteroids.
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It is necessary to treat the patient from the site of the emergency to raise a lifesaving rate of the patient. As a prime example would be out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Once you start the treatment after hospital arrival, cardiac arrest patient can't be life-saving. ⋯ It is because of that the quantity and quality of the emergency life-saving technician are being enhanced. And also doctor-helicopter system have been enhanced. Medical control is a critical component of the improvement.
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Fifteen years have passed since lung protective strategy to the patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) established. Recently, the new Berlin Definition of ARDS has been developed and this classified ARDS into three stages (mild, moderate, and severe ARDS), depending on the PaO2/FiO2. After this new definition of ARDS, each treatment to the patients with ARDS should be considered, depending on the severity of lung injury, such as prone position to the patients with severe ARDS, muscle paralysis to the patients with severe ARDS. In this review article, we review the history of lung protective strategy and ARDS definition, discuss the novel physiological approaches to minimizing ventilator-induced lung injury, and highlight a numbers of experimental/clinical studies to support these concepts.