Hong Kong Respiratory Medicine

Dale M Needham, Elizabeth Colantuoni, Pedro A Mendez-Tellez, Victor D Dinglas, Jonathan E Sevransky, Cheryl R Dennison Himmelfarb, Sanjay V Desai, Carl Shanholtz, Roy G Brower, Peter J Pronovost.  BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2124

Objective
To evaluate the association of volume limited and pressure limited (lung protective) mechanical ventilation with two year survival in patients with acute lung injury.

William McNulty, Giles Cox, Iain Au-Yong. BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2759

An 81 year old man presented to the emergency department with a one week history of fever, cough, and right sided chest pain. He had had a myocardial infarction in 2004 but was otherwise well. He had a 50 pack-year smoking history. Clinical examination was unremarkable. His chest x ray showed a left mid-zone nodule . He was treated for a lower respiratory tract infection and referred to the lung cancer clinic with two week wait for an appointment. The presence of a solitary pulmonary nodule raises the suspicion of cancer and requires careful further investigation to determine whether it is malignant or benign.

Li Zhang, Shenglin Ma , Xiangqun Song , Baohui Han , Ying Cheng , Cheng Huang , Shujun Yang , Xiaoqing Liu , Yunpeng Liu , Shun Lu , Jie Wang , Shucai Zhang , Caicun Zhou , Xiangwei Zhang , Nobuya Hayashi B, Mengzhao Wang. The Lancet Oncology, Early Online Publication, 17 April 2012 doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(12)70117-1

Background
Maintenance treatment of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without disease progression after first-line chemotherapy is a subject of ongoing research. The aim of the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, INFORM study was to investigate the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of the EGFR—tyrosine-kinase inhibitor gefitinib in the maintenance setting.

Date: 13th Nov 2011; Venue: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (New Wing)
Dr Arthur Lau delivered his talk on ‘Update on different interfaces for non-invasive positive pressure ventilation’

The Autumn Respiratory Seminar 2011 was held on 13th November, 2011 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center.

Volume 21 Number 4 • Dec 11/Jan 12, Editorial by Dr David CL Lam (January, 2012)

On behalf of the Editorial Board, may I wish you and your family very good fortune and health in the New Year of Dragon. It has been one year into my Editorship and I would like to take this great opportunity to thank all the Editorial Board Members and all the authors in the different thematic issues for their unfailing support.

In this issue, we have summarized the achievement and activities of the three respiratory societies over the past one year for the celebration of the 25th /15th Anniversary of the HKTS /HKLF. The success of these stories and activities were crystallization of the con-joint efforts among different office bearers and members of the three respiratory societies. In contrast to the topical review in the previous thematic issues, I hope the theme of the Anniversary events with inclusion of many different colourful pictures will serve as a mini-album to keep all these achievement and activities in good memories, to reflect the bright future of the respiratory communities and to be incentives for us to work further on with such goal.