Journal of intensive care medicine
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J Intensive Care Med · Jan 2011
A positive response to a recruitment maneuver with PEEP titration in patients with ARDS, regardless of transient oxygen desaturation during the maneuver.
Recruitment maneuvers (RMs) can expand collapsed alveoli in ventilated patients. The optimal method for delivering RMs is unknown. ⋯ In all, 80% of the patients with early ALI responded to the SRM with decremental PEEP titration. Desaturation during the SRM did not indicate a failed response 1 hour later.
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J Intensive Care Med · Jan 2011
A program to improve the quality of emergency endotracheal intubation.
To assess the results of a quality improvement (QI) project designed to improve safety of emergency endotracheal intubation (EEI). ⋯ EEI may be performed by pulmonary/critical medicine (PCCM) fellows with safety comparable to that described in other studies on EEI. Important parts of the program included the use of formal iterative QI approach, the use of intensive SBT with CPS, basic CRM, a comprehensive checklist, and a combined team approach. A key benefit of the program was to make the process of EEI fully transparent for ongoing quality and safety improvement.
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J Intensive Care Med · Jan 2011
Multicenter StudyReview of a large clinical series: Predicting death for patients with abdominal septic shock.
This paper reports the result of the MEDAN project that analyzes a multicenter septic shock patient data collection. The mortality prognosis based on 4 scores that are often used is compared with the prognosis of a trained neural network. We built an alarm system using the network classification results. ⋯ However, when the trained network computes a score value below the threshold during the ICU stay, there is a high probability that the patient will die within 3 days. The trained neural network obtains the same outcome prediction performance as the best score, the SOFA score, using narrower confidence intervals and considering three variables only: systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and the number of thrombocytes. We conclude that the currently best available score for abdominal septic shock may be replaced by the output of a trained neural network with only 3 input variables.
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J Intensive Care Med · Jan 2011
Randomized Controlled TrialCURB-65, PSI, and APACHE II to assess mortality risk in patients with severe sepsis and community acquired pneumonia in PROWESS.
Patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) comprised 35.6% of the overall phase 3 Recombinant Human Activated Protein C Worldwide Evaluation in Severe Sepsis (PROWESS) study and 33.1% of the placebo arm. We investigated the use of CURB-65, the Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI), and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) prediction scores to identify the CAP population from the PROWESS placebo arm at the greatest mortality risk. ⋯ Despite early diagnosis and appropriate antibiotic therapy, conventionally treated CAP with PSI = 5, CURB-65 3, or APACHE II 25 has an unacceptably high mortality. In this study, PSI, CURB-65, and APACHE II scoring systems perform similarly in predicting the 28-day and in-hospital mortality; however, differences in the categorization of severe CAP were observed and there was a significant mortality in patients with a CURB-65 <3 and PSI <5.
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J Intensive Care Med · Jan 2011
ReviewA review of the fundamental principles and evidence base in the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in critically ill adult patients.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) comprises a commonly used method of extracorporeal life support. It has proven efficacy and is an accepted modality of care for isolated respiratory or cardiopulmonary failure in neonatal and pediatric populations. ⋯ As such, all intensivists should be familiar with the evidence-base and principles of ECMO in adult population. The purpose of this article is to review the evidence and to describe the fundamental steps in initiating, adjusting, troubleshooting, and terminating ECMO so as to familiarize the intensivist with this modality.