Objective To study the feasibility of using heat and moisture exchangers (HME)as an alternative to heated humidifiers (HH) in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation. Methods 266 pa-tients with mechanical ventilation admitted to our ICU over the recent 3 years were allocated to the experi-mental group (humidification with a heat and moisture exchanger) and the control group (with heated hu-midifier), and the effect of humidification, the reserved time of artificial airway, the time on mechanical yen-tilation, the time of stay in ICU, the ineidenee of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and the mor-tality rate were comparatively studied and analyzed. Results Significant differences were found between the experimental and the control group in effect of humidification, insufficiency of humidification or excessive hu-midification, airway spasm and time on mechanical ventilation and time of stay in ICU. The incidence of VAP in the control group was significantly higher than that in the experimental group. There were no significant dif-ference between the two groups in the reserved time of artificial airway and the mortality rate. There were no accident of humidification occurred in the experimental group while there were one case complicated with air-way burn and 11 eases complicated with choking with water in the control group. Conclusions We conclude that HH can be replaced by HME on mechanical ventilation while disease evolution and effect of humidification should be monitored closely and keep HME unobstructed.

Objective    To evaluate the prognostic value of preoperative inflammatory indexes in patients with local-advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Methods    We retrospectively analyzed the clinical and prognostic data of 150 local-advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients who were treated by esophagectomy in Guangyuan Central Hospital from July 2014 to July 2015. There were 128 males and 22 females with average age of 62.23±8.48 years. The optimal cutoff value was determined by receiver operation characteristics (ROC) curve analysis. Patients were grouped according to the optimal cutoff values (NLR=3.49, PLR=152.28, MLR=0.36). Log-rank test, and multivariate Cox logistic regression modelling were used to assess the simultaneous influences of prognostic factors for survival outcomes after esophagectomy. Results    The patients with higher ratio (NLR>3.49, PLR>152.28, MLR>0.36) had significantly shorter median progression free survival (PFS) and lower postoperative recurrent rate than those of the patients with lower ratio. The stratified analyses found that thelymph node staging and postoperative recurrent rate were positively correlated with the higher ratio. However, the tumor differentiation was negatively correlated with it. In univariate analyses, patients with preoperative NLR>3.49, PLR>152.28 and MLR>0.36 had a poorer prognosis. Furthermore, in multivariate analyses we found MLR>0.36 was also significantly associated with a decreased postoperative recurrent rate (HR=12.945, 95%CI 2.31 to 72.548, P=0.00). Conclusions    The preoperative NLR, PLR and MLR are useful prognostic markers in patients with stage ⅢA-ⅣA esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who conducted esophagectomy.