Rhonchi

deseretnews.com | Variety of things can trigger asthma
The triggers for asthma run the gamut from the obvious to the odd — not just secondhand smoke and cat fur and perfumes and pollen but vigorous laughing or a good cry. Anything that irritates the lungs can make a susceptible person wheeze or worse, explains respiratory therapist Valerie Morgan-Wallace.

winnipegsun.com – Tom Brodbeck – Crisis at Seven Oaks
But the hospital couldn’t find a qualified ER doctor to fill the shift and had to make do with a family physician instead. Because family physicians are usually unable to handle more serious ER cases, the hospital also planned last night to divert all red and amber ambulance cases to other hospitals, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokeswoman Heidi Graham said.

An extra ambulance was added to last night’s shift to help handle the load, said Graham.

Meanwhile, the hospital had to staff the ER with a respiratory therapist to handle resuscitation cases because family doctors don’t do resuscitation, according to the WRHA.

Score one for the RTs!

Doctors Must Help COPD Patients Quit Smoking – Forbes.com
Despite the risks, more than 36 percent of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)are still smoking, a new study says.

“It doesn’t look like a good part of the [COPD] population is getting the information it needs from health-care providers,” lead researcher Jeannine Schiller, a statistician with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a prepared statement.

COPD includes chronic lung diseases like emphysema and bronchitis, and affects more than 13.5 million Americans. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and productive cough. The biggest risk factor for COPD is smoking, and it will cause flare-ups and the disease to worsen.

Almost 23 percent of the smokers in the study with COPD said that their doctor did not talk to them about quitting smoking within the last year, or offer them suggestions to help them quit.

TheDenverChannel.com – Health – Showers May Be Giving Some Women Lung Infection
Doctors across the country are seeing an increase in a bacterial lung infection called non-tuberculous mycobacteria or NTM.

There are not enough studies out right now to show exactly how a person gets the infection but some doctors believe it is possible to get it from hot tubs or even by taking a shower.

It is a lung disease that doctors say starts from germs that reside in the water and soil. It is even possible to get it from hot, steamy showers.

One of the theories of NTM is that germs become air-born because of the mist from the hot water.

More about Nontuberculous Mycobacteria

Viet Nam News
The German Messer Industrial Gases Group’s Dr Hans Messer Foundation donated medical equipment valued at US$20,000 to the National Hospital for Obstetrics and Gynaecology’s Neonatal Department in Ha Noi yesterday.

The batch of five respiratory therapy or continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machines, six phototherapy machines, three pulse oximeter monitors, three infant warmers and three incubators was presented by the group’s CEO, Stefan Messer.

The donation forms part of the Breath of Life programme of the non-governmental East Meet West (EMW) Foundation. The programme aims at reducing mortality rates among premature babies in Viet Nam. It is estimated that over 128,000 babies are born prematurely in Viet Nam each year and of those, 10 per cent suffer respiratory distress. About 12,000 babies will die and many more suffer brain damage from oxygen deprivation unless equipment, especially CPAP machines — standard equipment in developed countries — is available for intervention.

I like to see this kind of humanitarian donation.

Tracing Lung Ailments That Rose With 9/11 Dust – New York Times
After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase in diseases that scar the lungs and reduce their capacity to take in and let out air.

The Fire Department tracked a startling increase in cases of a particular lung scarring disease, known as sarcoidosis, among firefighters, which rose to five times the expected rate in the two years after Sept. 11. Though that rate has declined, doctors worry that the disease may be lurking in other firefighters. Experts who regularly see workers who were at ground zero in the 48 hours after the towers’ collapse expect monitoring to show many more cases of lung- scarring disorders among that group.

New evidence also suggests that workers who arrived later or worked on the periphery may also be susceptible to debilitating lung ailments.

Lung Cancer May Differ by Gender – Forbes.com
Women may experience lung cancer in ways that differ from men, a new study finds.

Many women recently diagnosed with lung cancer have normal lung function and better results on lung function tests than newly diagnosed male lung cancer patients, say researchers reporting in the May issue of the journal Chest.

Position: Respiratory
Department/Area: Respiratory Therapy
Number of Openings: 15
Need Open: YES
Incentives Offered: NO
Shift: 12-hr shifts
Start Date: * ASAP
End Date: 3 months and 6 month assignments
Hiring Stage: Accepting profile/initial file submission
Certifications: AHA CPR
Comments/Requirements: PICU experience
Email your resume to info@synergystaffing.org

This is a pretty cool idea:

Games Spotlight Healthy Lungs – News – Burke Connection – Connection Newspapers
This is the first Lung Games program in Virginia. “Our goal is to have these games throughout Virginia (at other lung rehab programs),” Montilla said.
Inova Fairfax has one of 23 lung rehabilitation programs in Virginia, Montilla said. Staff for it includes a pulmonologist, a nutritionist, a psychologist and several nurses and therapists.
Along with providing guided exercise to patients, the initial 10-week pulmonary rehabilitation program teaches patients how to use exercise machinery and medicines, and provide information about insurance policies for their disease. They also learn how to interpret their own pulmonary function data. Finally, they learn to control the panic that sometimes strikes when they have difficulty breathing.

Summary for patients. Those Incentive Spirometry orders stand!

Preoperative Pulmonary Risk Stratification for Noncardiothoracic Surgery: Systematic Review for the American College of Physicians — Smetana et al. 144 (8): 581 — Annals of Internal Medicine
The authors found good evidence that the following patient factors increase the chances of pulmonary complications: older age, American Society of Anesthesiologists class II or higher, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dependence on others for help with daily activities, and congestive heart failure. The authors also found good evidence that pulmonary complications are most common with aortic aneurysm repair, thoracic surgery, abdominal surgery, neurosurgery, vascular surgery, head and neck surgery, surgery lasting for more than 3 hours, emergency surgery, and general anesthesia. The only laboratory test result that predicted pulmonary complications was low serum albumin level (blood test that indicates poor nutritional status). The authors found good evidence that strategies to expand the lungs after surgery, such as deep breathing exercises, reduce the risk for pulmonary complications. They found fair evidence that selective use of a nasogastric tube (a tube passed through the nose to the stomach) for nausea, vomiting, or abdominal distention only reduces pulmonary complications after abdominal surgery. They found insufficient evidence to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of other strategies to reduce pulmonary complications.