The Indian journal of chest diseases & allied sciences
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Sleep is commonly disrupted in intensive care unit patients. The causes of this sleep disruption include the underlying medical illness itself, intensive care unit (ICU) environment, psychological stress, and effects of many medications and other treatments used to help those who are critically ill. The purpose of this review is to discuss the relevant literature in this regard, in order to improve the knowledge and recognition of this problem by health care providers. Also general and specific integrative steps to improving sleep of patients in the ICU is also described.
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Indian J Chest Dis Allied Sci · Jan 2008
ReviewChronic obstructive pulmonary disease: knowing what we mean, meaning what we say.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is defined in several different ways using different criteria based on symptoms, physiological impairment and pathological abnormalities. While some use COPD to mean smoking related chronic airway disease, others include all disorders causing chronic airway obstruction. When COPD is used as a broad descriptive term, specific disorders that cause chronic airway obstruction remain under-diagnosed and the prevalence estimates vary considerably. ⋯ The term COPD should be used exclusively for tobacco smoking related chronic airway disease. Chronic airway obstruction or obstructive lung disease may be used to define those conditions with airways obstruction caused by factors other than tobacco smoking. The aetiology may be appended to the label, for example, chronic airway obstruction/obstructive lung disease associated with bronchiectasis, chronic airway obstruction/obstructive lung disease associated with obliterative bronchiolitis or chronic airway obstruction/obstructive lung disease due to biomass fuel/occupational exposure.