Merry Christmas to all Respiratory friends

Merry Christmas to all Respiratory friends!!!

Thank you for all your permanent help and support in this hard year! We realized very useful things for promotion of ALL Respiratory conditions! We are hoping that we will continue this work with your help and in 2015!

 

COPD and Asthma are remaining neglected at the global level

The forthcoming post-Millennium Development Goals era will bring about new challenges in global health. Low- and middle-income countries will have to contend with a dual burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Some of these NCDs, such as neoplasms, COPD, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, cause much health loss worldwide and are already widely recognized as doing so.

The chronic nature of asthma and COPD requires continuous care and reliable access to affordable medications. These conditions have been set out by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) together with the need to prevent exacerbations with the use, in the first instance, of inhaled drugs. However the costs and availability of inhaled drugs are very variable and there is a tendency for these to cost more in low income countries.

European Commission must keep clean air on EU legislative agenda

Respiratory Decade is supporting Clean Air Package! 

In response to the increasing signs that the Junker Commission is going to withdraw the Clean Air Package from its 2015 Work Programme, the European Respiratory Society and European Lung Foundation (ELF), who are advocating for cleaner air as part of the Healthy Lungs for Life campaign, noted that:

"If the Junker Commission is looking for big problems to solve that will have a big impact on the health and well-being of the European population, air pollution is one of the most important as it affects 100% of us. By dropping the Clean Air Package and the National Emission Ceilings directive, Mr Timmermans is missing a prime opportunity – the NEC Directive would reduce exposure to pollutants in the air which currently cause 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year. It would also testify to EU's leadership on green growth and environmental protection on the international stage, would act as a catalyst for energy policy targets and would encourage industry to innovate on their climate change action. Instead, the health concerns of Europeans have been dropped and our health will suffer".

Do you have Obstructive Sleep Apnea?

Most individual symptoms and signs have limited utility in determining the likelihood of OSA, and no one sign is sufficiently precise to rule in or rule out this condition. Although the absence of snoring makes a diagnosis of OSA less likely, snoring on its own is common and does not discriminate between those with and without OSA. Thus, snoring must be interpreted in the context of other symptoms and signs. Likewise, self-reported sleepinessandmorning headaches do not help discriminate among patients with and without OSA. It is somewhat surprising that the overall impression of sleep medicine physicians of the likelihood of OSA in individual patients does not perform much better than the limited utility of individual findings. It is important to recognize that persons with normal body weight who do not snore are unlikely to have OSA, and their complaints of daytime sleepiness or fatigue should prompt an evaluation for alternative diagnoses. 

Although the evidence shows that a number of recently published multi-itemed questionnaires may help rule out OSA, they are not helpful in identifying patients affected by sleep apnea. Fortunately, it appears that an explicit combination of only a few findings, expressed as the SACS, has promise for identifying patients most likely to have OSA. Although the test is seemingly easy to use, validation at current diagnostic thresholds in more general populations by primary care clinicians would provide important evidence to justify its use in routine screening.

Patient Solidarity Day 2014

Today is a Patient Solidarity Day 2014!

High quality, equitable and affordable healthcare; nothing more than a dream for so many people around the world. This needs to change. We have all been a patient at some point in our lives, or cared for one. It’s time to stand together in solidarity to call for truly patient-centred healthcare.
One voice. United. Universal.

Every person, every patient is equal and all have the right to access the healthcare they need, when they need it. We need to unite to ensure that all people, across the world, have fair and impartial access to quality healthcare.

The core principles of universal health overage include:

• Patient-centred: all stakeholders need to work together to ensure that health systems prioritise and meet the needs of patients, their families and carers.
• Accessibility: universal health coverage must ensure that all patients can access health services they require. 
• Equity: all people, regardless of age, gender, race, disease or condition, and economic circumstances must have equitable access to healthcare. 
• Quality: care must be of high quality at all levels and stages of healthcare. 
• Empowerment: patients must be actively involved in all levels of healthcare decision-making. 
• Collaboration: improved access to healthcare for all is only possible with the collaboration of all stakeholders, including patients.   
• Value of healthcare: it is essential to place priority on the value, not the cost of providing access to high quality, equitable and affordable healthcare for all. 

Accountability: health systems must be accountable to the patients they serve, as accountability and transparency are vital to ensuring safe, effective healthcare.

4th International Primary Care Respiratory Group Scientific Meeting, Singapore, 28-30 May 2015

Dear Respiratory friends, we are happy to invite you to 4th International Primary Care Respiratory Group Scientific Meeting, which will take place at Singapore, 28-30 May 2015.

The International Primary Care Respiratory Group's conferences are the leading primary care respiratory scientific meetings and the premier place for primary care respiratory clinicians, academics and researchers from all over the world.

As always, we welcome colleagues from all over the world, and in particular, new colleagues from Asia Pacific.

1st IPCRG Respiratory Research School

The 1st IPCRG Respiratory Research School will run back-to-back with the IPCRG's 4th Scientific Meeting. 

Delegates with an interest and with or without experience of primary care research are welcome to attend as individuals or teams. During the day we will work in small groups, mentored by experienced primary care respiratory researchers and teachers, to develop robust research questions and methods that you will present to the other delegates and a panel of expert judges at the end of the day.

Prize: There is a research grant of £10,000 available for the research protocol judged to be the best to enable its implementation

Start of open access era

The prestigious scientific journal Nature is making its articles free to share and read online, a move that brings us one step closer to open access. The articles, dating all the way back to 1869, will be provided to subscribers and some media outlets in a format that can be read and annotated, but not copied, printed or downloaded.

World AIDS Day 2014: Pulmonary Manifestations of HIV

Respiratory symptoms may result from a wide spectrum of pulmonaryconditions  that includes both HIV-related and non-HIV-related conditions. The HIV-related conditions include both OIs and neoplasms. The OIs include bacterial, mycobacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic pathogens. OIs and neoplasms may be limited to the lungs, but pulmonary involvement may be only one manifestation of a multiorgan disease. Because prompt diagnosis and institution of appropriate therapy are essential for successful treatment of many of these HIV-related conditions, the initial focus of the evaluation of respiratory symptoms frequently and appropriately is placed on the diagnosis of an HIV-related OI or neoplasm. It is important to remember, however, that HIV-infected patients may have preexisting conditions or may develop conditions (eg, pulmonary embolism, asthma, or bronchogenic carcinoma in a cigarette smoker) unrelated to HIV infection that may cause respiratory complaints. In addition, factors that contribute to HIV infection, such as injection drug use (IDU), may contribute to respiratory disease (eg, pulmonary vascular disease). Clinicians should carefully consider these non-HIV-related respiratory conditions before embarking on an exhaustive search for an HIV-related OI or neoplasm.

The Pulmonary Complications of HIV Infection Study demonstrated that upper respiratory tract infections (URIs) such as sinusitis, pharyngitis, and acute bronchitis were more commonly the cause of respiratory symptoms than Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PCP), bacterial pneumonia, tuberculosis (TB), or pulmonary Kaposi sarcoma combined. This spectrum of pulmonary illnesses dominated by URIs and acute bronchitis in an outpatient-based clinical setting clearly shifts toward the opportunistic pneumonias in an inpatient- or hospital-based clinical setting, and it shifts toward PCP in an intensive care unit-based clinical setting. In addition, demographic and regional differences will affect the spectrum of pulmonary illnesses seen. Therefore, the diagnostic approach to the evaluation of respiratory symptoms in an HIV-infected patient must take all these factors into consideration.

 

In the current era of combination antiretroviral therapy, the frequency of HIV-associated OIs and neoplasms has decreased. In contrast, the frequency of noninfectious complications such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and lung cancer may be increasing. HIV infection appears to be an independent risk factor for COPD and PAH.