Heart & lung : the journal of critical care
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Hypoalbuminemia is a common finding in critically ill patients. It has been well documented that hypoalbuminemic patients have a higher morbidity and mortality rate when compared with patients with a normal serum albumin. ⋯ There is, however, very little evidence that this practice is of any benefit. In this article the physiology of albumin in health and disease is reviewed, and those clinical studies that have investigated the use of albumin in acutely ill hypoalbuminemic patients are evaluated.
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To examine nurses' ability to deliver 1.5 times the ventilated tidal volume at 100% FIO2 with a manual resuscitation bag during endotracheal suctioning. ⋯ Nurses observed were unable to meet the standard for volume or oxygen delivery. However this did not affect the patient's heart rate, mean arterial pressure, or SaO2.
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To determine the relationship between the mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2) and the cardiac index (CI) in individuals during the first 8 hours after coronary artery bypass grafting. ⋯ The results of this study indicate that immediately after coronary artery bypass grafting, SvO2 cannot reliably predict CI. Although statistically significant results were found for the correlation between PvO2 and CI at all data collection times, the correlations were too low to support the use of the PvO2 as a reliable clinical predictor of CI without further study.