BACKGROUND Pulmonary surfactant D (SP-D) has important regulatory functions for innate immunity and has been implicated as a biomarker for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We hypothesized that COPD patients would have reduced bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid SP-D levels compared to healthy smoking and non-smoking controls. METHODS BAL SP-D and phospholipids were quantified and ...

To determine the volume of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid necessary to diagnose Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in immunocompromised patients, specimens from 25 patients were evaluated. Twenty-one patients were HIV infected. BAL was performed using three to four 60-mL aliquots of room temperature, sterile, saline solution. Each syringe of BAL effluent was numbered and its volume was me...

Despite the increasing complexity of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) studies in asthmatics there are few published data concerning the variability of inflammatory parameters measured using this technique. We studied the intrasubject variability of cellular and solute parameters in 20 clinically stable, symptomatic, mild-to-moderate asthmatics, in repeat 180 mL BAL procedures performed 1 month apar...

Biphenotypic acute leukemia (BAL), or acute leukemia with a single population of blasts coexpressing markers of two different lineages, is a rare clinical entity. To define BAL, a scoring system was proposed by the European Group of Immunological Markers for Leukemias (EGIL) in 1995. However, increasing evidence suggests that this system has limitations, as acknowledged by the 2008 World Health...

Leukotrienes have been implicated to play a prominent inductive role in carcinogenesis. We previously reported that bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cells from smokers manifested higher levels of leukotriene B4 (LTB4) production than ex-smokers. This study aims to elucidate the underlying mechanism(s). BAL cells from current and former smokers were exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for up to 7 da...

Bronchoalveolarlavage (BAL) is routinely performed in adults for sampling cellular and biochemical components. Many studies have been performed that have enabled the proposal of recommendations for BAL, methodology and processing, as well as reference values in different clinical settings. In contrast, despite a world-wide increase in the use of BAL in children, including neonates, there are, a...

The aim of this study was to analyse the cost-effectiveness ratio of four diagnostic strategies for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Two hundred and ten HIV-infected patients with suspected PCP underwent induced-sputum (IS) followed, if negative, by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL); 85 of these patients were able to undergo an exerci...

When rat (female Wistar) lungs were lavaged (bronchoalveolar lavage, BAL) six times with physiological saline, approximately the same number of alveolar macrophages (AM) were found in the first and second BAL, whereas in the third fourth, fifth, and sixth BAL, the number of AM decreased exponentially. Morphometric counting of the number of AM in histological sections of lung tissue showed that ...

Amaç: Bal, eskiçağlardan günümüze kadar kullanılan organik bir besindir. Balın besin olarak tüketilmesinin yanı sıra hastalıkları iyileştirici özelliği de bilinmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı Mezopotamya ve Mısır uygarlıklarından ulaşan tıp metinlerinde balın hem tek başına karışımlarda yer aldığı reçetelerin araştırılması genel hangi hastalıklarda kullanıldığının ortaya konulmasıdır.Yöntem: çivi...

As for many clinical tools, there is at the present time no clear agreement on the appropriate clinical use of BAL. Undoubtedly, the recent and encouraging clinical experiences with BAL for diagnosis of opportunistic infections in the immunocompromised patient have encouraged a universal acceptance and interest in BAL. Because of the low morbidity of the lavage procedure and the significant yie...