Ethan Fried Ethan Fried

APT: Acute Respiratory Failure

Your patient is short of breath, tripoding on the side of the bed, you’re watching the O2 sat drop. What do you do? This week we hope to help give you additional tools to recognize when someone is in Acute Respiratory Failure. In preparation the required reading is about mechanical ventilation and an outline on acute respiratory failure. If there is time you should read the review article from NEJM on ARDS.

Required Reading


Essential Reading

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Ethan Fried Ethan Fried

APT: COPD

On October 22, we will be focusing on COPD for our Academic Half Day. In preparation there is a review article posted for pulmonary function tests. In addition, please review the GOLD Pocket guide. The guide itself is quite long, please focus on the diagnosis and management sections in the guide.


Indications for Noninvasive mechanical ventilation (at least one of the following)

  1. Respiratory acidosis

  2. Severe dyspnea with clinical signs suggestive of respiratory muscle fatigue, increased work of breathing, or both, accessory muscle use (paradoxical motion of abdomen, retraction of intercostal spaces)

  3. Persistent hypoxemia despite supplemental oxygen therapy

SUMMARY

Classification of Airflow limitation severity in COPD

GOLD 1 (Mild): FEV1 ≥ 80% of predicted

GOLD 2 (Moderate): 50% ≤ FEV1 < 80%

GOLD 3 (Severe): 30% ≤ FEV1 < 50%

GOLD 4 (Very severe): FEV1 <30% of predicted

Triple therapy:

  • IMPACT Trial (Once-Daily Single-Inhaler Triple versus Dual Therapy in Patients with COPD (nejm.org) : phase 3 RCT that compared effects of once daily triple therapy with LABA+LAMA+ICS vs: LABA/ICS or LABA/LAMA on COPD exacerbation

    • in contrast to FLAME trial which showed a benefit of LAMA-LABA over ICS-LABA for prevention of exacerbations

  • triple therapy led to significantly lower rates of moderate or severe COPD exacerbations and better lung function and quality of life

Long term supplemental O2 therapy

  • indicated for stable patients who have SaO2 ≤ 88% or PaO2 ≤ 55mHg

  • also indicated if PaO2 between 55 and 60mmHg if also evidence of pulmonary hypertension, CHF, polycthemia (Hct > 55%)

  • NEJM LOTT trial (A Randomized Trial of Long-Term Oxygen for COPD with Moderate Desaturation | NEJM) - patients with stable COPD and resting or exercise induced moderate desaturation, the prescription of long term O2 did NOT result in longer time to death or 1st hospitalization than no long term O2.

 
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Ethan Fried Ethan Fried

APT: Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS)

For this week’s Academic Half Day we will review ACS guidelines. In preparation for the day you will review the use of TIMI and GRACE scores with in risk stratification, a review article from NEJM, and an article outlining management from Cleveland Clinic.


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