The relationships of serum prealbumin levels with parameters that indicate severity of disease and emphysema pattern in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Objective: Malnutrition, which is a complication frequently observed in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and negatively affects prognosis, has become a parameter that must be monitored. Even though various methods are applied to assess malnutrition, biochemical parameters, especially serum prealbumin levels, are useful.

Materials And Methods: The relationships between serum prealbumin levels, which we used as an indicator of malnutrition, with the severity of disease and the parameters predicting emphysema in stable COPD patients with no additional health problems were determined in this prospective study.

Features of chronic hemodialysis practice after the Marmara earthquake.

After disasters, treatment of chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients is problematic because of logistic and medical reasons. This study analyzes features of HD practice in the regions affected by the Marmara earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey in August 1999. Questionnaires asking about HD infrastructure, medical/social problems of chronic dialysis patients, and the fate of dialysis personnel after the disaster were sent to dialysis units located in the affected region.