Pirfenidone in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: real-life experience from a German tertiary referral center for interstitial lung diseases.

Background: Pirfenidone is a novel antifibrotic drug for the treatment of mild-to-moderate idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). However, adverse events may offset treatment benefits and compliance.

Objectives: To assess recent course of disease, adverse events and compliance in patients who started pirfenidone.

Automated sleep stage identification system based on time-frequency analysis of a single EEG channel and random forest classifier.

In this work, an efficient automated new approach for sleep stage identification based on the new standard of the American academy of sleep medicine (AASM) is presented. The propose approach employs time-frequency analysis and entropy measures for feature extraction from a single electroencephalograph (EEG) channel. Three time-frequency techniques were deployed for the analysis of the EEG signal: Choi-Williams distribution (CWD), continuous wavelet transform (CWT), and Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT).

Steps toward subject-specific classification in ECG-based detection of sleep apnea.

This study deals with ECG-based recognition of sleep apnea in epochs of 1 min duration using spectral- and correlation-based features extracted from the modulation of QRS amplitude, respiratory myogram interference and RR intervals. On a database comprising 140 simultaneous recordings of polysomnograms (PSGs) and 8-lead Holter-ECGs, it is shown that a single-parameter ROC threshold classification can achieve high detection rates up to 81.0% sensitivity and 85.

Time frequency analysis for automated sleep stage identification in fullterm and preterm neonates.

This work presents a new methodology for automated sleep stage identification in neonates based on the time frequency distribution of single electroencephalogram (EEG) recording and artificial neural networks (ANN). Wigner-Ville distribution (WVD), Hilbert-Hough spectrum (HHS) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) time frequency distributions were used to represent the EEG signal from which features were extracted using time frequency entropy. The classification of features was done using feed forward back-propagation ANN.

ECG fingerprints of obstructed breathing in sleep apnea patients.

This article aims to identify the potential indicators of obstructive apnea (OA) in the ECG, based on the traces of QRS area from multiple ECG leads. We compare the difference in these traces' phase relation found during and after each OA episode to the difference between the first and second half of the OA and between split halves of epochs of normal respiration (NR).

[Microscopic polyangiitis as etiology for lung fibrosis--a known but often late-diagnosed cause].

Background And Purpose: Lung fibrosis as first symptomatic manifestation of microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) is rare. It is characterized by progressive exertional dyspnea, radiologic detection of reticular shadowing, and increased titers of MPA-associated autoantibodies. This case study shall remind of the rare treatable cause of lung fibrosis.