A smoking-cessation program consisting of extensive counseling, pharmacotherapy, and office spirometry: results of a pilot project in a Veterans Administration Medical Center.

Study Objective: To describe the 1-year outcomes of a Veterans Administration smoking-cessation program that demonstrates a standard of care comprising extensive counseling, pharmacotherapy, and office spirometry.

Design: Prospective one-group pretest-posttest, with an intervention of state-of-the-art practice in smoking cessation.

Setting: Outpatient clinic in a Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC).

[Use of plasma- and thrombocytapheresis in patients with stenocardia].

Marked microcirculatory changes, hemorheologic and immunologic disorders were found in anginal patients. Plasmapheresis with repeated thrombocytopheresis sessions as part of combined treatment improves these parameters, the improvement correlating with a stable clinical remission.

[Vascular reactivity and catecholamine excretion in hypertension].

Increased vascular reactivity to noradrenaline was revealed in patients with Stages I and II hypertensive disease; the reaction to the sympathomimetic agent of indirect action ephedrine remained at the control level. A salt load increased the discrepancy between the level of the reactions to these two agents. It is suggested that processes of catecholamine storage and excretion in the tissues are disturbed in hypertensive disease and that sodium ions probably take part in this process.