HIV/AIDS News & Information

Therapeutic Consequences Our patients all had evidence of severe asthma with alveolar hypoventilation and presumably inadequate cardiovascular adaptation as shown by metabolic aci­dosis with hyperlactacidemia, marked tachycardia, large paradoxic pulse and reduced inspiratory pulse pressure. Hyperlactacidemia in status asthmaticus is of debated mechanisms, but a moderately in­creased cardiac output, insufficient in regard to hy­poxemia and [...]

We demonstrated a constant and significant increase in inspiratory systolic, diastolic and pulse arterial pressures during MAST inflation while expiratory pressures remained unchanged. In consequence, delta systolic (paradoxic pulse), delta diastolic and delta pulse pressures all decreased. All pressures returned to baseline values in inspiration after MAST deflation. Respiratory and heart rates were unchanged during [...]

We included ten procedures for nine patients. A single patient was admitted twice in the same week for two distinct severe bronchial asthma episodes. All patients had evidence of respiratory and circulatory failure with alveolar hypoventilation, hypoxia, tachy­cardia and metabolic acidosis with hyperlactacidemia (Tables 1 and 2). No patient had hypotension (Fig 1) but during [...]

Patients We prospectively studied all patients admitted to the hospital for asthma between August 1986 and January 1988. The following protocol was accepted by the ethical committee of our institution. To be included in the study, patients met the following criteria: (1) age between 15 and 65 years old; (2) no evidence of previous cardiac [...]

Paradoxic pulse is frequently associated with acute asthma and is considered an index of the severity of both airway obstruction and its cardiovascular consequences. Paradoxic pulse reflects a decreased arterial systolic pressure in inspiration and an increase during expiration and is defined as the maximum difference of systolic arterial pressure within a respi­ratory cycle. Prior [...]

Education includes not only knowledge acquisition but also the ability to retain the knowledge learned, resulting in effective daily application of the knowledge acquired. We have demonstrated that CAPP is effective in teaching basic principles of asthma to an urban, African-American population residing in a low-income community. Once the participants have acquired this knowledge, they [...]

Participants All respondents were African-American parent/ caregivers (Table 2). Three-hundred-forty-two adult participants enrolled, and 267 completed at least four out of five classes as well as the prepost assessments at the beginning and end of classes. Seventy-five percent of the 267 participants responded to the telephone assessments at three- and six-month follow-up, and 50% responded [...]