[A diseased esophagus is frequently the cause of chronic hiccup. A prospective study of 184 cases].

Introduction: Chronic hiccup, defined as repetitive hiccup spells during more than 48 h, is an uncommon and neglected pathological condition, in which preliminary findings suggested an upper digestive origin.

Methods: We prospectively included 184 rebel chronic hiccups in this clinical and endoscopic study. Our rule of thumb was to consider upper digestive findings as first-rank in imputability and thus to treat them in priority.

Two early descriptions of restless legs syndrome and periodic leg movements by Boissier de Sauvages (1763) and Gilles de la Tourette (1898).

Boissier de Sauvages de La Croix and Gilles de la Tourette, French neurologists, noticed that patients with "anxiety in the lower limbs, shooting pain, tingling legs" may have an insomnia "at the time of wake-sleep transition [and] experience sudden jerks in the lower limbs." Their descriptions confirm that the clinical features of RLS were previously described in French literature in the 18th century.

Source of human ventilatory chaos: lessons from switching controlled mechanical ventilation to inspiratory pressure support in critically ill patients.

Ventilatory flow measured at the airway opening in humans exhibits a complex dynamics that has the features of chaos. Currently available data point to a neural origin of this feature, but the role of respiratory mechanics has not been specifically assessed. In this aim, we studied 17 critically ill mechanically ventilated patients during a switch form an entirely machine-controlled assistance mode (assist-controlled ventilation ACV) to a patient-driven mode (inspiratory pressure support IPS).

Eating disorder and metabolism in narcoleptic patients.

Study Objective: To evaluate eating behavior and energy balance as a cause of increased body mass index (BMI) in narcolepsy.

Design: Case controlled pilot study.

Settings: University hospital.

REM sleep behavior disorder in patients with guadeloupean parkinsonism, a tauopathy.

Study Objective: To describe sleep characteristics and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder in patients with Guadeloupean atypical parkinsonism (Gd-PSP), a tauopathy resembling progressive supranuclear palsy that mainly affects the midbrain. It is possibly caused by the ingestion of sour sop (corossol), a tropical fruit containing acetogenins, which are mitochondrial poisons.

Design: Sleep interview, motor and cognitive tests, and overnight videopolysomnography.

Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in patients with decompensated cirrhosis: case series.

Background: Opportunistic invasive fungal infections are increasingly frequent in intensive care patients. Their clinical spectrum goes beyond the patients with malignancies, and for example invasive pulmonary aspergillosis has recently been described in critically ill patients without such condition. Liver failure has been suspected to be a risk factor for aspergillosis.

Restoration of normal motor control in Parkinson's disease during REM sleep.

Although normal subjects do not move during REM sleep, patients with Parkinson's disease may experience REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD). The characteristics of the abnormal REM sleep movements in RBD have, however, not been studied. We interviewed one hundred consecutive non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease and their bed partners using a structured questionnaire assessing the presence of RBD.

Inspiratory resistances facilitate the diaphragm response to transcranial stimulation in humans.

Background: Breathing in humans is dually controlled for metabolic (brainstem commands) and behavioral purposes (suprapontine commands) with reciprocal modulation through spinal integration. Whereas the ventilatory response to chemical stimuli arises from the brainstem, the compensation of mechanical loads in awake humans is thought to involve suprapontine mechanisms. The aim of this study was to test this hypothesis by examining the effects of inspiratory resistive loading on the response of the diaphragm to transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Dyspnea as a noxious sensation: inspiratory threshold loading may trigger diffuse noxious inhibitory controls in humans.

Dyspnea, a leading respiratory symptom, shares many clinical, physiological, and psychological features with pain. Both activate similar brain areas. The neural mechanisms of dyspnea are less well described than those of pain.

Reduced breathing variability as a predictor of unsuccessful patient separation from mechanical ventilation.

Objectives: To compare descriptors of the breath-to-breath respiratory variability during a 60-min spontaneous breathing trial in patients successfully and unsuccessfully separated from the ventilator and the endotracheal tube and to assess the usefulness of these predictors in discriminating these two categories of patients.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: Four general intensive care units in university hospitals.

Responses of the diaphragm to transcranial magnetic stimulation during wake and sleep in humans.

Unlabelled: The human ventilation depends on bulbospinal and corticospinal commands. This study assessed their interactions in five healthy volunteers (two men, age 25-35) through the description of diaphragm and abductor pollicis brevis (APB) motor potentials (DiMEPs, abpMEPs) evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during relaxed expiration and tidal inspiration and during wake and sleep. NREM decreased corticospinal excitability and REM further did so, for both the diaphragm and the APB.

REM sleep behavior disorder and REM sleep without atonia in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy.

Study Objective: To compare sleep characteristics, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep without atonia, and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (tauopathy), patients with Parkinson's disease (a synucleinopathy), and control subjects.

Design: Sleep interview, overnight polysomnography, and Multiple Sleep Latency Tests.

Patients: Forty-five age- and sex-matched patients with probable progressive supranuclear palsy, (n=15, aged 68 +/- 8 years, 7 men), patients with Parkinson disease (n=15), and control subjects (n=15).

Effect of genetically caused excess of brain gamma-hydroxybutyric acid and GABA on sleep.

Background: Exogenous gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) increases slow-wave sleep and reduces daytime sleepiness and cataplexy in patients with primary narcolepsy.

Objective: To examine nighttime sleep and daytime sleepiness in a 13-year-old girl homozygous for succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase (SSADH) deficiency, a rare recessive metabolic disorder that disrupts the normal degradation of 4-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and leads to an accumulation of GHB and GABA within the brain.

Methods: Sleep interview, nighttime polysomnography, Multiple Sleep Latency Tests, and continuous 24-hour in-lab recordings in the patient; overnight polysomnography in her recessive mother and in a 13-year-old female control.

Stages 1-2 non-rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder associated with dementia: a new parasomnia?

A 55-year-old woman with a progressive dementia and frontal syndrome was hospitalized because she was agitated every night after falling asleep (spoke, laughed, cried, tapped, kicked, walked, and fell down). She slept 5.5 hours during video polysomnography, but the theta rhythm electroencephalograph recording typical of sleep stages 1 to 2 and the spindles and K-complexes typical of sleep stage 2 contrasted with continuous muscular twitching, prominent rapid eye movements, vocalizations, and continuous, complex, purposeful movements typical of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder.

Patients aged 90 years or older in the intensive care unit.

Background: Age is an important prognostic factor in patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs), but it is not as important as illness severity. However, age seems to remain an important independent triage criterion for ICU admission, and 90 years of age seems to represent a psychological barrier for many ICU physicians. The aim of this preliminary study is to compare the management and outcome of patients aged 90 years or older admitted to a respiratory ICU with those of patients aged 70 years or younger.

Sequential administration of docetaxel followed by cisplatin-vindesine: a pilot study in patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

In this phase II study, the feasibility and efficacy of sequential chemotherapy were tested with agents shown to be active as monotherapy. Patients with chemotherapy-naive, locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer were selected for the study. Treatment involved four cycles of docetaxel (100 mg/m(2) on day 1, every 3 weeks) (sequence A), followed by four cycles of cisplatin-vindesine (cisplatin 120 mg/m(2) on day 1 and vindesine 3 mg/m(2) on days 1, 8, 15, and 22, every 4 weeks) (sequence B).

Diaphragmatic dysfunction in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies.

Polymyositis, dermatopolymyositis, and inclusion body myositis imply chronic inflammation of skeletal muscles. Pulmonary complications include aspiration pneumonia, interstitial pneumonitis, or respiratory muscle myositis. This study aims at better describing their impact on respiratory muscle.

[Diagnosis and management of exacerbations and acute respiratory failure in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].

Acute episode of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease occurs in almost all patients, during which cough, expectoration and dyspnea increase. When the underlying disease is not severe and the acute episode not life-threatening, the term "exacerbation" is appropriate, and the patients can be managed at home. When the underlying disease is advanced and the acute episode possibly life-threatening, the terms of "acute respiratory failure" or "decompensation" can be used.

Upper airway afferents are sufficient to evoke the early components of respiratory-related cortical potentials in humans.

Repeated inspiratory occlusions in humans elicit respiratory-related cortical potentials, the respiratory counterpart of somatosensory-evoked potentials. These potentials comprise early components (stimulus detection) and late components (cognitive processing). They are considered as the summation of several afferent activities from various part of the respiratory system.

Expiratory-synchronized sleep in a quadriplegic patient using inspiratory neck muscles to breathe.

In a patient with C3 quadriplegia causing complete diaphragm paralysis who developed inspiratory neck muscles (INM) hypertrophy to sustain ventilation, spontaneous breathing deeply altered sleep architecture, relegating sleep to the expiratory phase of the ventilatory cycle. A polysomnographic recording performed during mechanical ventilation (without INM activity), showed that sleep was abnormal but unaffected by the respiratory cycle. During spontaneous breathing, the polygraphic recordings showed expiratory microsleep episodes, with inspiratory arousals synchronous to bursts of INM activity.

Simplified method to measure respiratory-related changes in arterial pulse pressure in patients receiving mechanical ventilation.

Study Objectives: Measuring respiratory-related changes in arterial pulse pressure is useful to guide fluid expansion in hemodynamically compromised patients. In the absence of automation, this can be uneasy in clinical practice. The objective of this study was to test an alternative approach (expiratory pause) that should be easier to apply.

Comparison of bedside measurement of cardiac output with the thermodilution method and the Fick method in mechanically ventilated patients.

Introduction: Bedside cardiac output determination is a common preoccupation in the critically ill. All available methods have drawbacks. We wished to re-examine the agreement between cardiac output determined using the thermodilution method (QTTHERM) and cardiac output determined using the metabolic (Fick) method (QTFICK) in patients with extremely severe states, all the more so in the context of changing practices in the management of patients.

Intracortical inhibition and facilitation of the response of the diaphragm to transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Respiratory muscles respond to a subcortical automatic command and to a neocortical voluntary command. In diseases such as stroke or motor neurone disease, an abnormal diaphragmatic response to single transcranial magnetic stimuli can identify a central source for respiratory disorders, but this is not likely to be the case in disorders affecting intracortical inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms. This study describes the response of the diaphragm to paired transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Mid-morning tryptophan depletion delays REM sleep onset in healthy subjects.

Because serotonin is involved in the diachronic regulation of sleep, we tested the effect of a midmorning rapid deficiency in the serotonin precursor tryptophan on the next night's sleep. After a 48-h low-protein diet, 17 healthy volunteers received either a tryptophan-free mixture of amino acids or a placebo at 10:30 A.M.