Active clinical trials for "Lung Diseases"

The Breathe Ventilator is a lightweight, wearable ventilator that has received U.S. FDA clearance for use in patients with respiratory difficulty. The investigators believe that the Breathe NIOV system will reduce the work of the diaphragm and breathing by providing added tidal volume and oxygen. This will be a study in 14 patients with severe-to-very severe chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) to assess their work of breathing while using the NIOV system as measured by esophageal and stomach pressures.

This study will investigate if adding a domiciliary respiratory physiotherapy treatment to standard care in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can improve physical function (walking test) and quality of life.

The aim of the present study is: To investigate pulmonary function abnormalities (restriction, obstruction, diffusion impairment, mixed pulmonary defects) in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) and to determine which of these pulmonary abnormalities prevail and to what extent. To determine the prevalence, underdiagnosis, and overdiagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as determined by spirometry and according to Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) criteria in patients with CHF. To investigate the presence of systemic inflammation, as measured by inflammatory parameters (leukocytes, platelets, high sensitivity CRP), in CHF patients with or without COPD.

The purpose of this study is to check the accuracy of a procedure called exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) testing. Exhaled carbon monoxide is used by physicians to help assess breathing in people with conditions like asthma and emphysema. eCO may be used to correct another breathing test (called diffusing capacity, or DLCO). Blood collection is usually required to correct the DLCO, so validation of the eCO test may help avoid that blood collection.

In this study, 20 COPD patients will undergo a high-resolution/multi slice CT scan and lung function tests to obtain patient specific geometries of the central and peripheral small airways and patient specific boundary conditions. With Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the investigators will be able to reconstruct the geometry and measure the resistance of the peripheral airways. In a later stage, CFD will be used to simulate the reaction of the airways on various inhalation medications.

Aim: To investigate whether patients with pulmonary hypertension have reduced absorption capacity compared to COPD patients without cor pulmonale potentially due to venous obstruction in the portal vein system. The presence of cor pulmonale was determined by echocardiography. The concentration of D-xylose and zinc were measured in peripheral blood one, two and three hours after ingestion and used as markers of absorption. Furthermore, urine was collected for five hours to determine the amount of excreted D-xylose.

In patients with both COPD and CHF, moderate chronic hypoxemia is caused by a combination of intrapulmonary and extrapulmonary factors. The hypothesis of this study is that adequate medical therapy for both conditions can correct the moderate hypoxemia by improving the underlying mechanisms without the need of LTOT. If this hypothesis is correct, the study will provide a valuable information to the Italian Agency of drugs (Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco, AIFA) to reduce the inappropriate use of LTOT for COPD patients with moderate hypoxemia and CHF, and will help the Italian National Health Service to reduce both the direct and indirect costs of unnecessary LTOT.

After performing VATS pulmonary wedge resections, a chest tube is routinely left in the pleural cavity to drain possible air leaks and fluid accumulations. Chest tubes after VATS pulmonary wedge resections are left in place a minimum of 1 day. However, this practice has no scientific foundations. The investigators believe it is possible to avoid the placement of a chest tube after this procedure in a great amount of patients. This is a randomized controlled clinical trial with analysis blinding in which the investigators want to compare the outcomes between installing a chest tube or not after VATS pulmonary wedge resections. The investigators will include consecutively patients with interstitial lung disease or indeterminate pulmonary nodules undergoing this procedure, at the participating institutions. The investigators calculated a sample size of 50 subjects in each group using pneumothorax < 10% data from Luckraz et al and to determine a difference of hospital stay of 2 versus 1 day; DS(1.5), power = 0.9 and alpha = 0.05.

Infants less than 2 years old who have been newly diagnosed with problems swallowing will have pulmonary function tests performed to try to detect the presence of chronic lung disease. Six months later after the infants have received appropriate therapy for their swallowing problems, pulmonary function tests will be performed again to see if there has been any change in their chronic lung disease.

Respiration failure type 2 is loss of the lungs ability to take up oxygen (O2) and get rid of carbon dioxide (CO2). The diagnosis is based on blood gas measurement of pressures of O2 and CO2. Patients with COPD is often seen to have co-morbidity with cardiac diseases. Chronic systemic inflammation is seen in both COPD and cardiac diseases. The investigators will investigate the sleep quality, CO2-retention, O2-saturation, cardiac arrythmias and markers of inflammation in 120 patients with COPD in different stages of the disease. Our hypotheses are: that the first signs of respiration failure type 2 is seen during sleep with alteration of sleep patterns and greater and more long-lasting retention of CO2 in the blood compared to those with a normal lung function that the use of alcohol, zopiclone or supplementary oxygen will make these differences even greater that cardiac arrythmias correlates with hypoxemia that cardiac arrythmias and respiration failure correlates with degree of inflammation