Rhinitis: adherence to treatment and new technologies.

Purpose Of Review: Nonadherence to treatment is a major issue in approximately 50% of patients suffering from chronic diseases. The availability of new technologies could represent a possible way to improve patients' engagement and adherence in a real-life setting. Research and technology tools made available or in process of being made available to patients with allergic diseases and their physicians could potentially improve the management of these disease in daily life by improving adherence.

Choose your outcomes: From the mean to the personalized assessment of outcomes in COPD. An exploratory pragmatic survey.

Background: Patient's expectations and needs may influence adherence in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The objectives of this survey were to assess the specific outcomes that patients expected their COPD treatment to improve (patient's personal outcome [PPO]) and to evaluate how the ongoing therapy was able to reach this objective.

Methods: We performed an exploratory pragmatic survey of COPD patients attending 2 university hospitals for scheduled follow-up visits.

Pidotimod: the state of art.

Despite the use of antibiotics and vaccines, the frequency of respiratory tract infections is still high and these infections interest a wide range of patients, from children to aged people, including in particular these extreme categories because of the deficiency of their immune system, due to immaturity in the former case and to "immunosenescence" in the latter. For that reason immunostimulant drugs are getting more important to prevent and to attenuate infections. Pidotimod (3-L-pyroglutamyl-L-thiazolidine-4carboxylic acid) is a synthetic dipeptide with immunomodulatory properties.

The nature and frequency of neovascular age-related macular degeneration.

Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the frequency and nature of neovascularization in age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) utilizing the combination of digital imaging techniques, fluorescein angiography (FA), indocyanine green (ICG) angiography, and optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Methods: A complete clinical examination was performed on 100 eyes of 93 consecutive newly diagnosed patients with neovascular ARMD. Digital fluorescein angiography, ICG angiography, and OCT were also used in evaluating those patients.