Journal of intensive care medicine
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J Intensive Care Med · Mar 2011
Comparative StudyReview of a large clinical series: once- versus twice-daily enoxaparin for venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in high-risk trauma patients.
Consensus guidelines support the use of low-molecular-weight heparin for venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis in high-risk trauma patients but do not recommend a specific regimen. The current study compared the effectiveness and safety of enoxaparin 40 mg once-daily versus enoxaparin 30 mg twice-daily for VTE prophylaxis in high-risk trauma patients. ⋯ Enoxaparin 30 mg twice-daily may be more effective than enoxaparin 40 mg once-daily for prevention of VTE in high-risk trauma patients; however, statistical significance was not achieved. There were no statistically significant differences observed in clinically significant bleeding. Further study is needed to clarify which dosing regimen of enoxaparin is superior with regard to safety and effectiveness.
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J Intensive Care Med · Mar 2011
Case ReportsAnalytic reviews: propofol infusion syndrome in the ICU.
Propofol is an alkylphenol derivative named 2, 6, diisopropylphenol and is a potent intravenous short-acting hypnotic agent. It is commonly used as sedation, as well as an anesthetic agent in both pediatric and adult patient populations. There have been numerous case reports describing a constellation of findings including metabolic derangements and organ system failures known collectively as propofol infusion syndrome (PRIS). ⋯ The best preventive measure for this syndrome is awareness and avoidance of clinical scenarios associated with development of PRIS. There is no established treatment for PRIS; care is primarily supportive in nature and may include the full array of advanced cardiopulmonary support, including extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). This article reviews the reported cases of PRIS and describes the current understanding of the underlying pathophysiology and treatment options.
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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.