Journal of critical care
-
Journal of critical care · Aug 2015
Psychometric evaluation of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale 3 months after acute lung injury.
To conduct a psychometric evaluation of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and to evaluate associations of 2 measures of psychological distress with the HADS Anxiety (HADS-A) and HADS Depression (HADS-D) subscales in acute lung injury (ALI) survivors. ⋯ When evaluated in ALI survivors, the HADS has good internal consistency and a 2-factor structure. The HADS subscales were substantially correlated with the EQ-5D-3L anxiety/depression item and SF-36 mental health-related domain scores, suggesting convergent validity for these measures of psychological distress in ALI survivors.
-
Journal of critical care · Aug 2015
Early levosimendan administration is associated with decreased mortality after cardiac surgery.
The aim of this study was to assess the effects on postoperative outcome of levosimendan with respect to timing of its administration in cardiac surgery patients. ⋯ Findings of this retrospective analysis favor an "early," that is, intraoperatively up to the first hour after ICU admission, start of perioperative levosimendan treatment to maximize its ability to reduce mortality and morbidity.
-
Journal of critical care · Aug 2015
Multicenter Study Observational StudyPharmacist's review and outcomes: Treatment-enhancing contributions tallied, evaluated, and documented (PROTECTED-UK).
The purpose was to describe clinical pharmacist interventions across a range of critical care units (CCUs) throughout the United Kingdom, to identify CCU medication error rate and prescription optimization, and to identify the type and impact of each intervention in the prevention of harm and improvement of patient therapy. ⋯ This observational study demonstrated that both medication error resolution and pharmacist-led optimization rates were substantial. Almost 1 in 6 prescriptions required an intervention from the clinical pharmacist. The error rate was slightly lower than an earlier UK prescribing error study (EQUIP). Two thirds of the interventions were of moderate to high impact.
-
Journal of critical care · Aug 2015
Weaning critically ill patients from mechanical ventilation: A prospective cohort study.
A proposal was made at the International Consensus Conference to classify weaning of patients in intensive care units from mechanical ventilation into simple, difficult, and prolonged weaning groups based on the difficulty and length of the weaning process. The objective of the present study was to determine the incidence and outcome of weaning according to these new categories. ⋯ Patients who experienced prolonged weaning had significantly higher mortality rates than patients who experienced either simple or difficult weaning. A lower Glasgow Coma Scale score and hypercapnia at the beginning of the weaning process were independent risk factors for prolonged weaning.
-
Journal of critical care · Aug 2015
Comparative StudyComparative evaluation of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scoring systems in patients admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit.
To assess and compare the performance of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU). ⋯ Both APACHE II and SOFA scores have good and comparable discriminative ability for predicting outcome. Calibration and accuracy indices are superior for APACHE II.