Epidemiology of Acute Lung Injury (ALI)/ Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) in Chiba Prefecture-Prospective Multicenter Cohort Study of Population-Based Morbidity and Outcome-

A prospective cohort study of ALI/ARDS in the Tohoku district of Japan (second report)

“…In the present study, these respective rates were 21.6% and 20.0%, which provides confidence in the reliability of the two studies. During the same period, Oda et al [25] conducted an epidemiological survey of ALI/ARDS in Chiba Prefecture, and found an annual incidence of ALI/ARDS of 6.1/100,000 population and a 28-day mortality rate of 31.6%. These findings suggest that the mortality rates of ALI/ARDS patients are lower in the Tohoku district and Chiba Prefecture in Japan compared to the findings of studies in the United States and Europe [9,10,12,13,23,24].…”

“…Moreover, the mortality in patients with severe cases, with APACHE II scores of 30-34, was only 18.8% (Table 5). The low mortality rates may be due to multimodal patient management such as the treatment of AHRF and ALI/ARDS with similar approaches; e.g., the use of steroid drugs [25,26], a neutrophil elastase inhibitor [27], and continuous hemodiafiltration (CHDF). Many studies have found multiple organ failure to be the primary cause of ALI/ARDS [4,28,29], and our present results also showed that this was the primary cause of death within 30 days of onset.…”