[Home respiratory care in Scandinavia]

Domiciliary ventilation has been used for 40 years, and is an effective treatment for chronic hypoventilation and thoracic deformity. Most patients only require assisted respiration at night, and are able to live quite normal lives during the day. The demand for domiciliary ventilation is expected to increase in all the Nordic countries. The articles in this special feature issue show that there are manifest national differences in the extent of domiciliary ventilation services, not only due to organisational differences but also due to differences in attitudes to the treatment as used in chronic progressive neurological diseases and chronic lung diseases. Current figures for the prevalence per 100,000 of the population are 3.5 for Denmark, 2.4 for Finland, 6.7 for Iceland, 2.3 for Norway and 5.5 for Sweden. The service is centralised in Denmark and Iceland, but less centralised in the remaining Nordic countries. Traditionally, it has been anaesthesiologists and specialists in infectious diseases who have shown interest in the service, and more recently interest among specialists in respiratory diseases has increased along with the increase in our knowledge of sleep-related breathing disorders. The use of nasal masks is becoming increasingly common. In Denmark many children and adolescents with muscular dystrophy, myopathy, etc, are referred to the two respiratory support units run in conjunction with the respective intensive care services at Copenhagen and Arhus, for assessment as candidates for domiciliary ventilation. These centres also train personal aides and relatives so that patients will be able to manage more or less on their own.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)