[Clinical analysis of home oxygen therapy in patients with pneumoconiosis at Iwamizawa Rosai Hospital].

Although home oxygen therapy (HOT) has become one of the standard therapies in the management of chronic respiratory failure, especially for patient with hypoxia, there are very few studies about HOT in patients with pneumoconiosis. Therefore, we clinically investigated the characteristics of 97 patients with pneumoconiosis and 30 patients with COPD on home oxygen therapy (HOT) followed at Iwamizawa Rosai Hospital during the period from 1990 to 2003. The mean survival time in patients with pneumoconiosis (42 months) by the Kaplan-Meier method was shorter than in patents with COPD (75 months). Among the patients with pneumoconiosis divided by chest radiography classification of pneumoconiosis, there was no significant difference in mean survival time. The survival time in pneumoconiosis patients with dyspnea grade IV was shorter than in patients with dyspnea grade III.