Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Dec 2000
Comparative StudyA comparison of severity of illness scoring systems for elderly patients with severe pneumonia.
To evaluate the predictive ability of three severity of illness scoring systems in elderly patients with severe pneumonia requiring mechanical ventilation compared to a younger age group. ⋯ Although the three severity of illness scoring systems (APACHE II, MPM II and SAPS II) demonstrated average discrimination when applied to estimate hospital mortality in the elderly patients with severe pneumonia, MPM II had the closest fit to our database. Alternative modeling approaches might be needed to customize the model coefficients to the elderly population for more accurate probabilities or to develop specialized models targeted to the designed population.
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To study the effect of sampling rate of laboratory and haemodynamic data on severity scorings and predicted risk of hospital death. ⋯ Increased sampling rate results in higher scores and lower SMR. Comparisons between hospitals using severity scores are biased due to differences in the sampling rates.
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Intensive care medicine · Dec 2000
Hypothermia with indoor occurrence is associated with a worse outcome.
To describe patients admitted to intensive care unit (ICU) for hypothermia, evaluate prognostic factors, and test the hypothesis that patients found indoors have a worse outcome. ⋯ With equivalent body temperature, patients found indoors were more severely affected and died more frequently than those found outdoors.
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Intensive care medicine · Dec 2000
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical TrialContinuous positive airway pressure facilitates spontaneous breathing in weaning chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients by improving breathing pattern and gas exchange.
To elucidate the effects of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) on breathing pattern, gas exchange and the ability to sustain spontaneous breathing (SB) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients with dynamic hyperinflation. ⋯ CPAP helps severely ill COPD patients sustain SB. Apparently it does so by promoting slower, deeper breathing and thus facilitating carbon dioxide elimination.