Patients with bronchiectasis have a lower combined risk of cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular comorbidity compared to patients with COPD.

Introduction And Objectives: Chronic respiratory diseases are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD); however, it is unknown whether some respiratory diseases are at higher risk than others. In this perspective, head-to-head studies comparing bronchiectasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are encouraged. We explored whether the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors (diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidemia) and cardiovascular comorbidity (systemic hypertension, ischemic heart diseases, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke) are different in these two diseases.

Treatment options in obstructive sleep apnea.

Treatment of OSA with CPAP is currently the recommended treatment and has the greatest evidence of efficacy on AHI, symptoms and comorbidities. Symptomatic patients with moderate-severe OSA generally have good adherence to CPAP therapy, while those with mild OSA, female, young and generally paucisymptomatic, have lower CPAP adherence, especially in the medium and long term. The recent identification of different clinical and pathophysiological phenotypes of OSA has paved the way for alternative treatments to CPAP, leading to an increasingly personalized therapy.

Renal haemodynamics and coronary atherosclerotic burden are associated in patients with hypertension and mild coronary artery disease.

Intrarenal hemodynamic alterations are independent predictors of cardiovascular events in different populations. It has been hypothesized that there is an association between renal hemodynamics and coronary atherosclerotic burden in patients with hypertension. Therefore, the present study examined the associations between renal hemodynamics, coronary atherosclerotic burden and carotid atherosclerotic disease.

Para-perirenal distribution of body fat is associated with reduced glomerular filtration rate regardless of other indices of adiposity in hypertensive patients.

Obesity is a well-known risk factor for the development and progression of chronic kidney disease. Recently, para-perirenal ultrasonographic fat thickness (PUFT) has shown to correlate with both total and visceral fat better than body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and other indices of obesity. Moreover, a local paracrine and mechanical action of the PUFT on kidney has been described in recent studies.

Relationship between kidney findings and systemic vascular damage in elderly hypertensive patients without overt cardiovascular disease.

Few studies have investigated the influence of age on the relationships between systemic vascular damage, kidney dysfunction, and intrarenal hemodynamic changes in patients with hypertension without overt cardiovascular disease. The authors enrolled 126 elderly patients with hypertension (aged ≥65 years) and 350 nonelderly patients with hypertension (aged <65 years). Carotid intima-media thickness, renal resistive index, and aortic pulse wave velocity were performed in all patients.