Rhonchi

This looks useful:

CPHP Learning Center: Terrorism, Preparedness, and Public Health: An Introduction

At the end of this course, public health workers will be competent to describe the public health role in emergency response in a range of potential or possible emergencies and to recognize unusual events that might indicate an emergency and describe appropriate action. A minor focus is the chain of command in emergency response. Several activities are designed to help the learner identify personal limits of knowledge and direct the learner to useful resources when these limits have been exceeded.

Carthage Press
Respiratory therapists and students from across Missouri, including McCune-Brooks Hospital’s own Chalaine Bell and Heather Neil, visited Jefferson City in February to discuss several legislative actions regarding respiratory care in Missouri

This is all the talk of the AARC disaster preparedness mailing lists. Even I, so many years out of practice in the RT game feel like I could provide help with mechanical ventilation if bird flu hits in earnest. This is assuming of course, I myself am not put down by the flu!

Hospitals Short on Ventilators if Bird Flu Hits – New York Times
No one knows whether an avian flu virus that is racing around the world might mutate into a strain that could cause a human pandemic, or whether such a pandemic would cause widespread illness in the United States. But if it did, public health experts and officials agree on one thing: the nation’s hospitals would not have enough ventilators, the machines that pump oxygen into sick patients’ lungs.

Right now, there are 105,000 ventilators, and even during a regular flu season, about 100,000 are in use. In a worst-case human pandemic, according to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November, the country would need as many as 742,500.

To some experts, the ventilator shortage is the most glaring example of the country’s lack of readiness for a pandemic.

Roomba and Respiratory Care… a connection I never would have imagined. Maybe Roomba needs DME (durable medical equipment) status.

Consumer Reports On Roomba
Several people with respiratory problems like allergies were extremely happy because the Roomba tirelessly cleans their rooms even when they are too tired to vacuum.

Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension makes… strange bedfellows?

Viagra can help the young and breathless – Health – Times Online

Until now Viagra (sildefanil) has been used mainly to correct the common problem of impotence in older men panting away in bed. But now it has a new medicinal purpose, for which it will be renamed Revatio. It will also acquire a new shape and colour and be prescribed in a different dose. For the drug, manufactured by Pfizer, has been found to have a dramatic effect in treating a rare but always debilitating and eventually fatal disease: pulmonary arterial hypertension.

File this under famous RT’s: Terry Schiavo’s widow, Michael Schiavo, is a registered nurse and an RT. This article is about him catching heat for omissions on some job applications:

Oh, Oh, Schiavo—Another State Criminalizes Lying On Resume

Schiavo is licensed in Florida as a registered nurse and respiratory therapist.

Avian Influenza
The purpose of this web page is to provide links to on-line avian influenza information, particularly on strain H5N1, and related materials for use by veterinary students, veterinarians and other health professionals. I update this list irregularly as I happen onto good on-line resources and when I need to use it for teaching. I’ve bolded those resources that I consider more important or valuable or that I tend to use most often. Please let me know if you find mistakes or resources that I’ve overlooked.

NPR : Health Officials Consider Strategy for Possible Bird Flu Pandemic
Health experts worry that in the event of a bird-flu pandemic, there could be a severe shortage of ventilators and intensive care unit beds. Planning has begun to determine which cases would get treatment priority.

The ‘Jaws’ of Pulmonary Fibrosis

The recent loss of Jaws author Peter Benchley adds another name to the long list of prominent people affected by pulmonary fibrosis; Academy Award-winning actor Marlon Brando, acclaimed screenwriter Peter Stone, and music producer Sam Phillips. In the United States, over 200,000 individuals are living with the disease. As a consequence of misdiagnosis, the numbers may be significantly higher. Of these, more than 40,000 are lost each year. There is no cure for pulmonary fibrosis and the origin and development of the disease are not completely understood. Some causes include inhaled environmental and occupational pollutants, diseases such as scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and sarcoidosis, certain medications or drugs, and therapeutic radiation. In cases when the cause cannot be identified, the disease is termed “idiopathic.”

more at pulmonaryfibrosis.org

Lincare execs reap millions via stock plans – Tampa Bay – MSNBC.com
The 2003 Medicare reform law hurt Lincare in two areas beginning in 2005, said the president of The Weeks Group, a Melbourne-based management consulting firm for the home care industry. The law reduced reimbursement for durable medical equipment, including the oxygen equipment that Wallace Weeks called Lincare’s bread and butter, as well as fees Lincare collects for respiratory drugs mailed to patients nationally.

While some companies are getting out of the respiratory medicine business, others are finding ways to take cost out of their systems through different delivery methods or changing their payor mix, Weeks said. He expects Lincare, which is not a client of Weeks’, to follow suit.

Lincare has gone back to its suppliers to get better pricing, Lehman analyst Fischbeck wrote in a Feb. 14 report. Cutting the cost of goods and services has kept cash flow strong, allowing Lincare to buy back stock as well as expand through acquisitions, he said.

That positions the company to take advantage of disruption at competitors and be a consolidator in the market, wrote Fischbeck, who has a $47 a share price target for Lincare stock. Balaji Gandhi, an analyst at Oppenheimer, has set an even higher price target, $51 a share, citing expected acceleration in merger and acquisition activity among other factors.