[Home mechanical ventilation: dependency and burden of care in the home].

Background: While home mechanical ventilation (HMV) prolongs survival in selected groups of patients, its use is associated with progressive dependency in basic activities, and many users will require informal care in their homes. The workload assumed by the informal caregivers can have financial, physical, and psychological repercussions. Our objective was to study dependent patients on HMV, and to describe the impact of the situation on their caregivers.

[Tobacco smoking and sputum smear conversion in pulmonary tuberculosis].

Background And Objective: To analyze if cigarette smoking delays the sputum smear conversion in pulmonary tuberculosis.

Patients And Method: Ninety eight patients were diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. Patients were all not immunosuppressed, infected by human immunodeficiecy virus (HIV) or drug resistant.

[Chemotherapy and survival in advanced non-small cell lung carcinoma: is pneumologists' skepticism justified?].

Objective: Few studies have assessed whether the advantage chemotherapy has been shown to have in treating advanced non-small lung carcinoma in clinical trials is transferrable to normal health care activity. This could explain the skepticism of a large number of pneumologists towards this treatment. The objective of our study was to analyze prognostic factors related to survival and to see whether cytostatic treatment was an independent predictor.