[Home oxygen therapy of chronic bronchitis patients. Clinical, functional and pulmonary hemodynamic results. Apropos...

Seventeen subjects (16 male, 1 female) with a mean age of 60 +/- 7 years were studied.

severe chronic bronchitis (mean FEV1 = 960 ml with frank hypoxaemia (PaO2 less than 60 mmHg); past history of right heart failure or electrical signs of right ventricular hypertrophy or pulmonary hypertension (PAP greater than 20 mmHg); oxygen therapy at home for greater than 10/24 hours (most often greater than or equal to 12 hours) for more than a year; interval of more than 6 months between the first haemodynamic investigation (before the start of O2) and the last, this period being on average 23.9 +/- 18.6 months. From a clinical standpoint, there were 5 deaths occurring 11 to 30 months after the start of O2. Effort dyspnoea was stable or worsened but hospitalisations for cardiorespiratory decompensation were less frequent than before the start of O2. There were no significant changes in arterial blood gases: PaO2 rose from 51.9 +/- 8.1 to 52.5 +/- 7.0 mmHg. PAP improved in 12 cases out of 17, and for the group as a whole the difference was not statistically significant. However in the sub-group where the daily duration of administration was greater than 12/24 hours (n = 7), PAP improved in all the individual cases and fell on average from 26.4 +/- 6.8 to 19.9 +/- 3.4 mmHg (p less than 0.02) whilst in the 10-12 hours sub-group there was no mean change in PAP.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)