Physicians increasingly are being called upon to make difficult decisions about intensive care for patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS patients who require intensive care have a poor prognosis; the in-hospital mortality rate of those receiving mechanical ventilation for P carinii pneumonia is 86-100 percent in most studies. However, in the past year, two studies documenting improved outcome have been published. Physicians should understand these outcome data and use well-established ethical principles to allow informed competent patients with AIDS to express their preferences regarding intensive care. Patients should be encouraged to provide advanced directives regarding life-sustaining treatments or to designate surrogate decision-makers to be consulted should they lose mental competence. The health care system should provide alternatives to the ICU for compassionate terminal care. However, arbitrary policies denying intensive care to AIDS patients for whom it is medically indicated and desired are not warranted.

Among 72 patients with Behçet's syndrome, seven had pulmonary vascular involvement. Additional data from 42 cases in the literature are discussed. Recurrent episodes of dyspnea, cough, chest pain, and hemoptysis were the primary clinical signs, mainly in young men, appearing 3.6 years after the first manifestation of Behçet's syndrome. Fever, elevated ESR, and anemia were common, and chest x-ray films showed pulmonary infiltrates, pleural effusions, and prominent pulmonary arteries. Ventilation-perfusion scans showed perfusion defects even when chest x-ray films were normal. Pulmonary artery aneurysms were seen in 7/13 in whom angiography was done. Of 42 patients, 16 died, 15 from fatal pulmonary hemorrhage, 80 percent within two years from the development of pulmonary disease. Histopathologic study results showed vasculitis of pulmonary vessels of various sizes, leading to thrombosis, destruction of the elastic laminae, aneurysms, and arteriobronchial fistula. In addition, pulmonary emboli and the aphthous lesion of the tracheobronchial tree may aid the clinical picture. Anticoagulant therapy may be hazardous in patients with aneurysmal dilatation of the pulmonary vascular tree, and the beneficial effect of corticosteroid therapy is discussed. Pulmonary vasculitis in Behçet's syndrome is a unique clinical and pathologic picture, differing from other vasculitides affecting the lung, presents a major threat to the patient's life.

Exercise testing prior to lung resection has long and honored tradition. It began as a test of tolerance using simple techniques such as stair climbing. This was followed by aggressive and invasive protocols using right cardiac catheterization in the search for pulmonary hypertension. More recently, measurement of VO2 with exercise has been reported to predict both postoperative mortality and survivable morbidity. Exercise testing holds promise as a noninvasive test to predict the physiologic outcome from lung resection. Significant questions remain concerning the pathophysiologic mechanisms responsible for an abnormal result and who should be denied thoracotomy based on these results.