Even though acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has been intensively and continuously studied in various settings, its mortality remains high. Mechanical ventilation is an essential component of the care of patients with ARDS. Thus, many randomized controlled clinical trials have been conducted, evaluating the efficacy and safety of various methods of mechanical ventilation in order to adapt ventilatory setting to protect patients from ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) and to treat them effectively.

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical features of ocular sarcoidosis. The second aim was to assess the influence of eye involvement on the prognostic outcome, extrapulmonary organ, and endobronchial involvement in sarcoidosis patients. Third objective was to determine the contribution of ocular involvement to final diagnosis in patients presenting with an equivocal sarcoidosis diagnosis due to single organ disease.

This study aimed to evaluate the cardiorespiratory indicators of preterm infants submitted to two noninvasive ventilator support systems in two periods. It was an controlled randomized clinical trial (RBR-7d9dth). Fifty-two newborns (gestational age of 30.6±2.3 weeks, weight of 1,366±445 g) submitted to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy were studied. The infants were randomly allocated to two groups: 31 children received CPAP therapy for 48 hours and 21 children for 72 hours. The respiratory rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation and Silverman-Andersen Score were recorded once a day. Three measurements were obtained in a 15 minutes intervals. The infants were monitored during the predetermined period of noninvasive ventilation and for 24 hours after pressure support withdrawal. The Student t-test was used for comparison of the variables between groups after normality evaluation by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and significance was considered when p<0.05. It was found that the birth characteristics were homogenous, without significant differences between groups. The cardiorespiratory indicators did not differ significantly between groups, but better mean values were observed for the 72-hour group. There was a difference in the respiratory rate of 5.0 breaths per minute and the heart rate was 7.8 bpm, while oxygen saturation was similar in the two groups.

A 44 year old female was referred for hyperbaric oxygen treatment of leg ulcers. The patient had port-wine stain, hand vitiligo, hypertrophy of one extremity, collateral abdominal, and varicose leg veins. Calcium was 12 mg/dL and PTH was 309 ng/L. Hepatomegaly, deep vein thrombosis of the right leg, transudative ascites, hypersplenism, parathyroid adenoma, mesenteric cyst, and papillary thyroid carcinoma were identified. The final clinical diagnosis was Klippel-Treanunay-Weber syndrome.