Impact of Marijuana Use on Lung Health.

The widespread use of marijuana in the context of increasing legalization has both short- and long-term health implications. Although various modes of marijuana use-smoked, vaped, or ingested-may lead to a wide scope of potential systemic effects, we focus here on inhalational use of marijuana as the most common mode with the lung as the organ that is most directly exposed to its effects. Smoked marijuana has been associated with symptoms of chronic bronchitis and histopathologic changes in airway epithelium, but without consistent evidence of long-term decline in pulmonary function.

A 34-Year-Old Woman With Recurrent Right-Sided Chest Pain and Dyspnea.

A 34-year-old woman presented with her third episode of acute-onset right-sided chest pain and dyspnea. She had two prior similar occurrences of right-sided sharp, pleuritic chest pain with radiation to the back and dyspnea. Chest radiographs during these presentations revealed a small apical right-sided pneumothorax that was managed conservatively with high-flow oxygen.

A 55-year-old man with a small right lung and a right-sided heart.

A healthy 55-year-old man without known medical problems presented for a routine physical examination and was found to have an abnormal ECG. He denied chest pain, dyspnea, palpitations, dizziness, or syncopal episodes. He also denied orthopnea, paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea, and lower-extremity edema.

Auto-adjusting and advanced positive airway pressure therapeutic modalities.

Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy is the first-line treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Although the gold standard for the treatment of OSA, CPAP may not be the optimal modality to treat more complex sleep disordered breathing such as Cheyne-Stokes respirations, opioid-induced central apnea, and complex sleep disordered breathing related to chronic hypoventilation syndromes (obesity-hypoventilation syndrome, restrictive thoracic disease due to neuromuscular or thoracic cage disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Newer generation auto-adjusting PAP devices are increasingly being used to treat OSA.

Effects of malnutrition with or without eicosapentaenoic acid on proteolytic pathways in diaphragm.

Attenuation of muscle wasting has been reported with eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) use in cachectic states. Pathways mediating muscle proteolysis with severe short-term nutritional deprivation (ND)±EPA were evaluated, including diaphragm fiber-specific cross-sectional areas, mRNA (real-time PCR) and protein expression (Western blot). Rats were divided into three groups: (1) free-eating controls, (2) ND and (3) ND+EPA.