Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Sep 1999
Comparative StudyApplication of mortality prediction systems to individual intensive care units.
To evaluate the predictive accuracy of the severity of illness scoring systems in a single institution. ⋯ Although the overall mortality was consistent with the predicted mortality, the poor fit of the data to the model impairs the validity of the result. The observed outcome could be due to erratic quality of care, or differences between the study population and the patient population in the original studies. The data cannot be used to distinguish between these possibilities. To increase predictive accuracy when studying individual intensive care units and enhance quality of care assessments it may be necessary to adapt the model to the patient population.
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To evaluate resting energy expenditure (REE) in brain dead patients and to investigate the hypothesis that the reduction in REE results from a decrease in cerebral blood flow. ⋯ In brain dead patients, REE decreases to values lower than BMR. This can be attributed to the cessation of cerebral blood flow and consequently cerebral metabolism and not to hypothermia.