OBJECTIVE To identify parameters that indicate retained secretions and the need for tracheal suctioning (TS) in patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV). DESIGN Prospective observational study. SETTING A 14-bed medical ICU in a 946-bed university hospital. PATIENTS Sixty-six consecutive patients receiving MV. INTERVENTIONS Two successive tracheal suctions, TS1 and TS2, performed a...

Cough is a symptom and central element for diagnosis of very common respiratory affection causes of death and loss of productivity in intensive pig farms. The aim of this research is the comparison between acoustic features of cough sounds originating from infectious and non infectious diseases. The acoustic parameters investigated are Peak Frequency and Duration of cough signals. The differenc...

BACKGROUND The effect of body position on the generation of abnormal respiratory sounds (eg, snoring and stridor) is well recognized. Postural effects on normal lung sounds have been studied in less detail but need to be clarified if respiratory acoustic measurements are to be used effectively in clinical practice. METHODS Lung sounds and airflow were recorded in six healthy male subjects. Tw...

Pneumothorax is usually diagnosed based on the attenuation of respiratory sounds of the affected side on auscultation, but it requires a skilled technique and is limited to subjective evaluation. Thus, we designed a device which analyzes and converts the frequency of auscultatory sounds to numerical values with a computer. With this device, the bilateral sound pressure levels were compared betw...

Pulmonary function testing remains the gold standard for the diagnosis and management of wheezing disorders in older children and adults. Although wheezing disorders are among the most common clinical problems in pediatrics, most young children and toddlers cannot perform most of the currently clinically available pulmonary function tests. In this article, we review the different types of pulmo...

Asthma is not a single disease, but an umbrella term for a number of distinct diseases, each of which are caused by a distinct underlying pathophysiological mechanism. These discrete disease entities are often labelled as 'asthma endotypes'. The discovery of different asthma subtypes has moved from subjective approaches in which putative phenotypes are assigned by experts to data-driven ones wh...

OBJECTIVE To perform a review of the epidemiological aspects of investigating and treating wheezing in infants. SOURCES A search was run on MEDLINE using the keywords "wheezing," "infants," "diagnosis," "treatment," and "children," and Google was also used to search for "Estudio Internacional de Sibilancias en Lactantes." SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS The prevalence of wheezing in infants varies ...

Previous studies have suggested that asthma prevalence is generally lower in the Middle East than in more developed countries. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and severity of asthma and asthma symptoms in schoolchildren in the Ramallah District in Palestine. In the autumn of 2000, 3,382 schoolchildren aged 6-12 yrs were surveyed in 12 schools, using the International Stu...

The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) uses standardized symptom-based questionnaires to describe the prevalence of symptoms of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema in children worldwide. Three governorates in the Syrian Arab Republic (Aleppo, Lattakia and Tartous) participated in ISAAC phase 3 in 2001-03. Adolescents in the 13-14 year age group and parents of th...