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Importantly, increased use of support groups and national foundation forums have served as venues for further disease education, communication, and advanced care planning outside of the hospital settings. The purpose of this review article is to discuss the clinical features of IPF, the role of palliative care in chronic disease management, current data supporting benefits of palliative care in IPF, its role in symptom management, and practices to help patients and their caregivers achieve their best quality of life.Professional societies have developed recommendations for patient triage protocols, but wide variations in triage patterns for many acute conditions exist among hospitals in the United States. Selleck Abiraterone Differences in hospitals' triage patterns can be attributed to factors such as physician behavior, hospital policy and real-time conditions such as intensive care unit capacity. The patient safety concern is that patients evaluated for admission to the intensive care unit during times of high intensive care unit capacity may have adverse outcomes related to delays in care. Because standardization of a national triage policy is not feasible due to differing resources available at each hospital, local guidelines should prevail that take into account hospitals' local resources. The goal would be to better match intensive care unit bed supply with demand.Asthma is a heterogeneous chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that affects approximately 300 million people worldwide. About 5-10% of all asthmatics suffer from severe or uncontrolled asthma, associated with increased mortality and hospitalization, reduced quality of life, and increased health care costs. In recent years, new treatments have become available, and different asthma phenotypes characterized by specific biomarkers have been identified. Biological drugs are currently indicated for patients with severe asthma that is not controlled with recommended treatments. They are mostly directed against inflammatory molecules of the type 2 inflammatory pathway and are effective at reducing exacerbations, maintaining control over asthma symptoms, and reducing systemic steroid use, which is associated with well-known adverse events. Although biological drugs for severe asthma have had a major impact on the management of the disease, there is still a need for head-to-head comparison studies of biologics and to identify new biomarkers for asthma diagnosis, prognosis, and response to treatment. Identifying novel biomarkers could facilitate the development of therapeutic strategies that are precisely tailored to each patient's requirements.INTRODUCTION Release of the 2015 European Society of Cardiology (ESC)/European Respiratory Society (ERS) guidelines put increased emphasis on using combination therapy, either as upfront or sequential therapy among patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). However, with these recommendations and the therapy advances made in the last several years, little is known on the real-world treatment patterns among patients with PAH, particularly before and after publication of the 2015 ESC/ERS guidelines. METHODS This was a retrospective study of adult commercial and Medicare Advantage with Part D (MAPD) enrollees with at least one claim for a PAH-related medication from January 01, 2012 to March 31, 2017, at least one medical claim with a pulmonary hypertension diagnosis, and continuous health plan enrollment at least 6 months prior to and at least 12 months following the date of the first pharmacy claim for PAH-related therapy (index date). Patients were divided into cohorts based on prescription of monotpublication of the 2015 ESC/ERS guidelines, indicating that physicians responded to the guideline's option of prescribing upfront combination therapy.The past 20 years have seen major advances in the diagnosis and management of pulmonary hypertension, a disease associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The 6th World Symposium in Pulmonary Hypertension (WSPH) took place in February 2018 and attempted to consolidate the current knowledge in the field into practical recommendations to help prioritize an action plan to improve patient outcomes and identify future research directions. In this review, we will summarize the highlights of the 6th WSPH proceedings, including revisions to the hemodynamic definitions and classification of the various types of pulmonary hypertension, genetic advances, approaches to risk stratification, and updated treatment algorithms.BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Experience of the use of lenvatinib (LEN) in the clinical setting remains limited. We conducted this study to elucidate the factors associated with progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced HCC treated with LEN. METHODS In this multicenter retrospective study, we analyzed data on patient characteristics, treatment outcomes, and adverse events (AEs) for 77 patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We also analyzed PFS and factors that influence PFS. RESULTS The response rate to LEN was 29.9% and the disease control rate was 77.9%. Patients who achieved relative dose intensities of more than 70% had better outcomes (response rate 45.2% vs. 11.4%, P  less then  0.01). Appetite loss, fatigue, diarrhea, hypertension, and thyroid dysfunction were the most frequent AEs. Twenty-three patients (29.9%) had grade 3 or 4 AEs. Fifty-two patients (67.5%) required a dose reduction and 47 (61.0%) stopped taking the drug due to AEs. The PFS rates at 3, 6, and 12 months were 81.2%, 49.8%, and 34.8%, respectively. The median PFS was 5.6 months. Multivariate analysis showed that thyroid dysfunction of grade ≥ 2 (hazard ratio [HR] 4.57, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.05-10.2, P  less then  0.01), appetite loss (HR 3.58, 95% CI 1.72-7.52, P  less then  0.01), and tumor diameter ≥ 40 mm (HR 2.27, 95% CI 1.17-4.40, P = 0.015) were independent factors associated with poor PFS. On the other hand, Child-Pugh class 5A (HR 0.41, 95% CI 0.19-0.90, P = 0.027) and complete or partial response (HR 0.40, 95% CI 0.17-0.95, P = 0.039) were independent factors associated with better PFS. CONCLUSIONS Thyroid dysfunction and appetite loss after the administration of LEN were independent factors associated with shorter PFS, so these AEs should be carefully managed after administering LEN.