End-of-life decision making in respiratory failure. The therapeutic choices in chronic respiratory failure in a 7-item questionnaire.

Introduction: The transition from paternalistic medicine to a healthcare culture centred on the patient's decision making autonomy presents problems of communication and understanding. Chronic respiratory failure challenges patients, their families and caregivers with important choices, such as invasive and non-invasive mechanical ventilation and tracheostomy, which, especially in the case of neuromuscular diseases, can significantly postpone the end of life.

Material And Methods: A 7-item questionnaire was administered to 100 patients with advanced COPD, neuromuscular diseases and pulmonary fibrosis, all of them on oxygen therapy and receiving day-hospital treatment for respiratory failure.

Iron lung versus mask ventilation in acute exacerbation of COPD: a randomised crossover study.

Objective: To compare iron lung (ILV) versus mask ventilation (NPPV) in the treatment of COPD patients with acute on chronic respiratory failure (ACRF).

Design: Randomised multicentre study.

Setting: Respiratory intermediate intensive care units very skilled in ILV.

Discriminant analysis on small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer by means of NSE and CYFRA-21.1.

A correct diagnosis of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is essential both for prognostic and therapeutic reasons. We used discriminant analysis as a method to optimize the discriminant power of serum tumour marker levels for differentiation between SCLC and NSCLC. A panel of serum markers, including neurone specific enolase (NSE), cytokeratin fragment antigen 21.

[Correlation between C219 and drug resistance in lung neoplasms].

The authors take into consideration 19 cases of lung neoplasm to see the relationship of clinical behaviour and C219. They found a cutoff (25%) to separate drug resistant by drug sensibility. Marker sensitivity was 84.