When actor John Ritter died suddenly in 2003 from a tear in his thoracic aorta — the large artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body — that tragedy brought attention to a rare but deadly condition that takes the lives of an estimated 10,000 Americans each year.
The American Thoracic Society has released a new official clinical policy statement on congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS), a disorder of respiratory and autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation. The ANS regulates reflexive acts, including heart rate and blood pressure, digestion, body temperature and pain perception.
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that using high-resolution CT-scans to screen for lymphangioleiomyomatosis, or LAM, is cost-effective in non-smoking women between 25 and 54 who come to the emergency room for the first time with a collapsed lung.
Researchers have demonstrated the safety of a potential vaccine against mesothelioma, a rare cancer associated primarily with asbestos exposure. The vaccine, which infuses uses a patient’s own dendritic cells (DC) with antigen from the patient’s tumor, was able to induce a T-cell response against mesothelioma tumors.
Patients hospitalized with mild to moderate community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) should not be routinely prescribed prednisolone, a corticosteroid, as it is associated with a recurrence of symptoms after its withdrawal, according to the first randomized double-blind clinical trial to address the subject.
The ATS and the European Respiratory Society have issued official standards for the quantitative assessment of lung structure.
Children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may one day be able to have an injection or use a throat spray instead of getting their tonsils removed to cure their snoring, according to a new study from the University of Chicago, which found that a specific gene product may be responsible for the proliferation of adenotonsillar tissue that can cause pediatric OSA.
PHILADELPHIA, January 12, 2010 — The American College of Physicians (ACP) has issued a position paper to guide ethical relationships among patients, physicians, and caregivers.
Brazilian researchers have performed the first-ever autopsy study to examine the precise causes of death in victims of the H1N1 swine flu.
Older adults with long-term exposure to higher levels of pollution are at higher risk for hospitalization for pneumonia, according to researchers in Canada.
“Our study found that among older individuals, long-term exposure to traffic pollution independently increased their risk of hospitalization for pneumonia,” said principal investigator, Mark Loeb, M.D., of McMaster University.
Researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered a technique that is able to determine whether a child has obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) or habitual snoring by screening their urine.
Asthmatic smokers may be able to reverse some of the damage to their lungs that exacerbates asthmatic symptoms just by putting down their cigarettes, according to research out of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
The research is published in the December 15 issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.