The outcome of patients not requiring ventilatory support in this study was encouraging, while invasive ventilation was again confirmed as predicting a dismal prognosis in this population. Efforts should be directed to avoiding this procedure by reducing the pulmonary toxicity of antineoplastic treatment and to making ventilatory support more tolerable.

During sepsis, adrenal androgens and glucocorticoids show a diverse time-dependent course in survivors and nonsurvivors.

Haemoptysis is a potentially life-threatening condition with the need for prompt diagnosis. In about 10-20% of all cases the bleeding source remains unexplained with the standard diagnostic approach. The aim of this article is to show the necessity of widening the diagnostic approach to haemoptysis with consideration of pulmonary venous stenosis as a possible cause of even severe haemoptysis and haemoptoe.A review of the literature was performed using the Medline/PubMed database with the terms: ''pulmonary venous stenosis'', ''pulmonary venous infarction'' and ''haemoptysis''. Further references from the case reports were considered.58 case reports and case collections about patients with haemoptysis due to pulmonary venous stenosis were detected. This review gives an overview about the case reports and discusses the underlying pathophysiology and the pros and cons of different imaging techniques for the detection of pulmonary venous stenosis.Several conditions predispose to the obstruction of the mediastinal pulmonary veins. Clinical findings are unspecific and may be misleading. Pulmonary venous stenosis can be detected using several imaging techniques, yet three-dimensional magnetic resonance-angiography and three-dimensional contrastenhanced computed tomography are the most appropriate. Pulmonary venous stenosis should be considered in patients with haemoptysis. @ERSpublications Pulmonary venous stenosis should be considered in haemoptysis and is best diagnosed using CT or MRI venography http://ow.ly/tMPFP

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