View clinical trials related to Dyspnea.
Filter by:Breathlessness is a dangerous symptom. Preliminary data from national and regional Danish databases show, that patients with shortness of breath in the ambulance have a very high mortality. Breathlessness can be caused by many different conditions - but heart diseases and lung diseases are dominant. The mortality is especially high in patients with breathlessness caused by heart disease. Distinguishing these different causes of breathlessness is a classical, often difficult, discipline in medicine. Visitation and guidance of treatment in patients with breathlessness in the prehospital setting relies on medical history and physical examination and as a consequence prehospital treatment for breathlessness is often non-specific. The use of heart-failure specific biomarkers may improve prehospital visitation and treatment of patients with breathlessness. We hypothesize, that 1. Supplementing the routine examination by prehospital anesthesiologist with measurement of a biomarker for heart failure increases the proportion of patients with severe shortness of breath caused by heart disease triaged directly to department of cardiology 2. This strategy does not increase the proportion of patients with severe shortness of breath caused by non-heart disease triaged directly to department of cardiology
Acute dyspnea is a common chief complaint of patients presenting to the emergency department. Patients with acute dyspnea display a high mortality rate. In-hospital mortality is as high as 10% during hospitalization and up to 30% within 6 months of follow-up. The Triple A Initiative Study is designed to improve the coordination of care for patients with acute dyspnea alerting the Emergency Medical Service (EMS). We hypothesize that the coordination of care starting at the EMS level including point-of-care testing of the cardiac biomarker NTproBNP will support preclinical and clinical diagnostic clarification. Treatment deriving from earlier diagnostic clarification will reduce length of stay in the hospital, treatment costs and improve patient's outcome.
THE AIM OF THIS STUDY IS TO TEST IF THE STRETCHING OF THE RESPIRATORY ACCESSORY MUSCLE PROVIDE SOME BENEFIT ON THORACOABDOMINAL MECHANICS, FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE
Dyspnea (breathlessness) on exertion is the most prevalent and distressing symptom of heart failure (HF). Nevertheless, the mechanisms of dyspnea in HF remain poorly understood. Thus, the general aim of this pilot study is to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of activity-related dyspnea in patients with HF. Studies will be performed in patients with mild, moderate and severe HF (n=24) as well as in healthy, age- and sex-matched control subjects (n=8). We will test the hypothesis that the increased prevalence and severity of activity-related dyspnea in HF reflects the interaction between an exaggerated drive to breathe and the inability of the respiratory system to meet this increased demand. Detailed physiological and perceptual responses to bicycle exercise will be examined and compared, first, between HF patients and healthy control subjects and, second, across patients with varying degrees of HF severity. The results from this preliminary study will be used to help design future studies in this patient population.
Dyspnoea is the uncomfortable shortness of breath that debilitates millions of patients with lung disease, heart failure and cancer. It is often very difficult to treat. The sensations of dyspnoea are processed in the brain, and we believe that psychological factors modify and amplify these sensations, frequently exacerbating symptoms. This study aims to identify the importance of learning in the brain mechanisms of dyspnoea by investigating a cohort of patients with chronic breathlessness undergoing pulmonary rehabilitation . Pulmonary rehabilitation is a six-week course of exercise, education and group therapy that improves dyspnoea but does not improve lung function. This leads us to hypothesise that some of the beneficial effects of PR maybe due to changes in brain processing, potentially relating to a learning effect. Therefore to probe whether learning is important in the beneficial effects of pulmonary rehabilitation, we intend to modify learning with the drug d-cycloserine. D-cycloserine is an antibiotic that enhances learning due to its effects at N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the hippocampus. Our previous study in a similar group of patients demonstrated the importance of the hippocampus in breathlessness perception, and we now wish to investigate this in more depth. The study involves collecting physiological, psychological and clinical measures on in conjunction with brain scanning, before, during and once after pulmonary rehabilitation. Subjects will either receive d-cyloserine or placebo before the first four pulmonary rehabilitation sessions.
There is increasing interest in how thoracic (chest) ultrasound might enhance the management of patients with respiratory failure and breathlessness, particularly in the emergency admissions or intensive care setting. Thoracic ultrasound is already used in a number of clinical settings. It is recognised that a number of lung abnormalities can be identified using thoracic ultrasound, such as consolidation (in pneumonia) or peripheral soft tissue lesions (in lung cancer). Furthermore, thoracic ultrasound offers clinicians a non-invasive diagnostic tool that provides immediate feedback and results. Patients with breathlessness and respiratory failure represent a significant proportion of emergency admissions to hospital and commonly require urgent treatment with limited information available to guide the clinician. The range of diseases that present with breathing difficulties is broad (e.g. pneumonia, heart failure, pulmonary embolus) and difficult to differentiate in patients who often have multiple medical problems. This leads to non-specific treatment in the face of diagnostic uncertainty with the associated risks of treatment complications, increased morbidity and mortality, and distress for patients and relatives. It is in the assessment of these patients with acute respiratory failure where thoracic ultrasound might be of greatest benefit and which this research is designed to address. This is a single centre study (Churchill Hospital, Oxford) recruiting 125 participants over an eight month period. The study will test the reliability of a thoracic ultrasound protocol at identifying lung abnormalities in a stable outpatient population with respiratory disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; interstitial lung disease; patients on haemodialysis to replicate acute pulmonary oedema / heart failure). It is hoped the results of this study will inform further research in acutely unwell patients with respiratory failure and breathlessness to see whether thoracic ultrasound can improve diagnostic and therapeutic decisions.
Many individuals with lung cancer experience debilitating breathlessness at some point during the course of their illness. Unfortunately, few interventions exist to treat this distressing symptom of cancer. In this study, the investigators plan on recruiting individuals with lung cancer to participate in a behavioral intervention to help relieve breathlessness. The principal investigator of the study, Dr. Joseph Greer, is a licensed clinical psychologist who has trained nurse practitioners in how to deliver the behavioral intervention. The nurse practitioners will meet with patients diagnosed with lung cancer during their outpatient oncology appointments, such as chemotherapy infusions, to review the behavioral skills that may help with breathlessness. Specifically, the intervention includes education about the relationship between breathlessness and the stress response as well as teaches patients skills for breathing control and relaxation of the body. For this single-group pilot study, the investigators will ask participants to provide feedback about whether they found the intervention acceptable and effective. Participants will also complete questionnaires about their physical and psychological symptoms before and after the intervention in order to measure its effectiveness for treating breathlessness and any distress related to breathlessness. The data from this study will help inform improvements to the intervention in order to make it feasible and effective for treating breathlessness in patients with lung cancer.
This is a prospective registry of patients presenting with acute dyspnea to the emergency department of the city hospital in Nuremberg. There is evidence that acute dyspnea is associated with a mortality rate of 10%, however acute dyspnea is not perceived as a life-threatening condition, both in public and in health care providers. Our aim is to describe the patient collective concerning their demographics, baseline characteristics, type of referral and disposition, medical care processes and prognosis. Secondly, we want to evaluate if the subjective risk assessment of emergency department personnel matches with objective risk stratification tools and the actual outcome of the studied patients.
Dyspnea is a frequent, mostly unpleasant and long-lasting, but also often undertreated symptom. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a new non invasive method to modify brain activation has shown good efficacy in the treatment of pain especially in the clinical context. Given the fact that dyspnea has many common characteristics with pain, especially concerning the brain areas involved in its central processing, we hypothesize that tDCS may also modify the perception of dyspnea. In order to test this, we first shall determine whether tDCS has a significant effect on acutely induced dyspnea in healthy volunteers. In case of promising results of this pilot study, the next step will be the evaluation of the benefit of tDCS in patients with severe dyspnea.
This pilot clinical trial studies lisinopril in reducing shortness of breath caused by radiation therapy in patients with lung cancer. Lisinopril may decrease the side effects caused by radiation therapy in patients with lung cancer.