Journal of critical care
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2018
Comparative StudyHighly visible sepsis publications from 2012 to 2017: Analysis and comparison of altmetrics and bibliometrics.
We sought to delineate highly visible publications related to sepsis. Within these subsets, elements of altmetrics performance, including mentions on Twitter, and the correlation between altmetrics and conventional citation counts were ascertained. ⋯ While unreliable to gauge impact or future citation potential, altmetrics may be valuable for parties who wish to detect and drive public awareness of research findings and may enable researchers to dynamically explore the reach of their work in novel dimensions.
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2018
Not all organ dysfunctions are created equal - Prevalence and mortality in sepsis.
While organ dysfunctions within sepsis have been widely studied, interaction between measures of organ dysfunction remains an understudied area. The objective of this study is to quantify the impact of organ dysfunction on in-hospital mortality in infected population. ⋯ There exist differences in measures of organ dysfunction occurrence and their association with mortality. These findings support increased clinical efforts to identify sepsis patients to inform diagnostic decisions.
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2018
Observational StudyPatients with small-vessel vasculitides have the highest mortality among systemic autoimmune diseases patients treated in intensive care unit: A retrospective study with 5-year follow-up.
Systemic autoimmune diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders associated with dysfunction of multiple organs and unpredictable course. Complicated management and treatment become even more challenging when patients require critical care. This study aims to compare outcomes of small-vessel vasculitides (SVV) and other systemic autoimmune diseases (SAD) patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). ⋯ Among systemic autoimmune diseases small vessel vasculitides appear to be associated with the highest ICU mortality, higher requirement for advanced procedures and aggressive immunosuppressive therapy.
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2018
Patterns of palliative care utilization among patients with end stage liver disease during end-of-life hospitalizations: A population-level analysis.
To investigate the patterns and predictors of palliative care (PC) utilization across ICU- and non ICU-managed patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) during end-of-life hospitalization. ⋯ There was persistent gap in use of PC among ICU-managed patients with ESLD during end-of-life hospitalization. ICU utilization rose, unexpectedly, despite the increasing use of PC in this cohort, and PC utilization was, paradoxically, lower among patients with the highest need.
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2018
The Italian law on informed consent and advance directives: New rules of conduct for the autonomy of doctors and patients in end-of-life care.
Italy has long lacked a law regulating patients' informed consent and advance directives (ADs). All previous attempts to introduce a law on this matter failed to reach positive outcomes, and aroused heated ideological debate over the exact meaning of life and death. We report on the new law on informed consent and ADs approved by the Italian Parliament on 14th December 2017. ⋯ The effects of the new law must be tested in the field. Its objectives will be achieved if, in clinical practice, ADs are able to satisfactorily represent informed personal preferences through patients' relationships with their physicians, as part of personalized advance care planning. Future studies are necessary to assess the impact of the new law in Italy.