A new guideline has provided an updated definition of severe asthma along with new recommendations for treating the condition.Produced by a joint task force of the European Respiratory Society and the American Thoracic Society, the guideline was published online in the European Respiratory Journal.Although severe asthma is estimated to account for less than 10% of all asthmatics, these patients have the greatest burden and require a disproportionate amount of healthcare costs to be spent on treating their condition, which is harder to control. (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)

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Conclusions:Questionnaires alone, possibly given a reliance on sleepiness as a symptom, cannot reliably rule out the presence of OSA. Objective physiological measurement is critical for the diagnosis and exclusion of OSA.Citation:Pereira EJ; Driver HS; Stewart SC; Fitzpatrick MF. Comparing a combination of validated questionnaires and level III portable monitor with polysomnography to diagnose and exclude sleep apnea. J Clin Sleep Med 2013;9(12):1259-1266. (Source: Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine : JCSM)

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Impact and predictors of acute exacerbation of interstitial lung diseases after pulmonary resection for lung cancer.

J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2013 Nov 20;

Authors: Sato T, Teramukai S, Kondo H, Watanabe A, Ebina M, Kishi K, Fujii Y, Mitsudomi T, Yoshimura M, Maniwa T, Suzuki K, Kataoka K, Sugiyama Y, Kondo T, Date H, for the Japanese Association for Chest Surgery

Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The study objective was to examine the incidence, risk factors, and mortality rate of acute exacerbation of interstitial lung diseases in patients with lung cancer undergoing pulmonary resection in a large-scale multi-institutional cohort.
METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 1763 patients with non-small cell lung cancer who had undergone pulmonary resection and presented with a clinical diagnosis of interstitial lung diseases between January 2000 and December 2009 at 61 hospitals in Japan. The incidence and outcomes of acute exacerbation within 30 days from the operation were investigated. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify independent risk factors of acute exacerbation.
RESULTS: Acute exacerbation occurred in 164 patients (9.3%; 95% confidence interval, 8.0-10.8), with a mortality rate of 43.9%, and was the top cause of 30-day mortality (71.7%). The following 7 independent risk factors of acute exacerbation were identified: surgical procedures, male sex, history of exacerbation, preoperative steroid use, serum sialylated carbohydrate antigen KL-6 levels, usual interstitial pneumonia appearance on computed tomography scan, and reduced percent predicted vital capacity. Surgical procedures showed the strongest association with acute exacerbation (using wedge resection as the reference, lobectomy or segmentectomy: odds ratio, 3.83; 95% confidence interval, 1.94-7.57; bi-lobectomy or pneumonectomy: odds ratio, 5.70; 95% confidence interval, 2.38-13.7; P < .001). The effect of perioperative prophylactics, such as steroids and sivelestat, was not confirmed in this study.
CONCLUSIONS: Pulmonary resection for patients with lung cancer with interstitial lung diseases may provoke acute exacerbation at a substantially high rate and has high associated mortality. Surgical procedures that proved to be a risk factor for acute exacerbation should be chosen cautiously for these high-risk patients.

PMID: 24267779 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]