Pulmonary Involvement in Patients with Hematological Malignancies

The number of patients treated for hematological malignancies is increasing steadily. To maximize cure rates, aggressive treatments have been introduced, including high-dose chemotherapy, stem cell transplantation, and targeted therapies. As a result, overall and disease-free survival rates have improved substantially, but at the price of life-threatening toxic and infectious complications that chiefly target the lung. This book provides clinicians caring for patients with hematological malignancies with detailed, up-to-date information on all relevant aspects of pulmonary involvement. Individual sections are devoted to epidemiology, diagnostic strategy, lung infections, non-infectious pulmonary involvement, and treatment, including decision making in patients with acute respiratory failure. Each of these sections contains a number of chapters, all written by leading international experts. In addition, the reader's attention is drawn to important 'pearls' relating to each condition.

Dr Élie Azoulay is the Assistant Director of the Medical ICU at the Saint-Louis Teaching Hospital, Paris, France. He is a professor of medicine at the Denis Diderot Paris 7 University. From his background as a pulmonologist, Dr Azoulay developed a strong research focus on acute respiratory failure in immunocompromized patients. His PhD work was on respiratory physiology in an experimental model of cancer chemotherapy-related pulmonary toxicity. He has several published clinical research studies on acute respiratory failure in hematology and oncology patients. Also, Dr Azoulay leads a collaborative multicenter group that has performed observational studies, large cohort studies, and randomized controlled trials in cancer patients with ARF. His second major field of interest in clinical research is communication with family members of ICU patients. He constituted a research group in 1997 (the French Famirea Study Group) to evaluate the ability of critical care clinicians to provide effective information to ICU patients and families. Several of his published studies investigated the burden of critical illness in relatives and in ICU clinicians. The group's major aim is to identify targets for improvement and to test potential interventions in international RCTs in order to advance ICU practices in the field of information and communication. In addition to clinical and research activities, Dr Azoulay teaches pulmonary medicine, critical care medicine, and ethics at the Paris Medical School. He is also associate editor of Intensive Care Medicine, in the editorial board of the American Journal of respiratory and Critical Care medicine, and the chairman of the ethics section of the ESICM. Dr Azoulay is a member of the European board of Pfizer and Gilead.