Journal of critical care
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Journal of critical care · Jun 2023
Diagnosing acute kidney injury ahead of time in critically ill septic patients using kinetic estimated glomerular filtration rate.
Accurate and actionable diagnosis of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) ahead of time is important to prevent or mitigate renal insufficiency. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of Kinetic estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (KeGFR) in timely predicting AKI in critically ill septic patients. ⋯ Predictive performance of KeGFR combined with UO criteria for diagnosing AKI is excellent. Compared to KDIGO, deterioration of renal function was identified earlier, most prominently for lower stages of AKI. This may shift the actionable window for preventing and mitigating renal insufficiency.
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Journal of critical care · Apr 2023
Relationship Between Intra-Abdominal pressure and microaspiration of gastric contents in critically ill mechanically ventilated patients.
The relationship between increased intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and microaspiration of oro-gastric content in mechanically-ventilated patients has not yet been established. Microaspiration is proposed as one of the causes of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). We aimed to investigate whether mechanically-ventilated patients with increased IAP present evidence of lung microaspiration by assessing pepsin levels in bronchial secretions and evaluated the relationship between pepsin and VAP. 68 mechanically-ventilated patients and 10 control subjects were recruited from an academic ICU in Greece. ⋯ Pepsin values were higher in patients with VAP, while IAP was independently associated with VAP. There was an indication towards increased VAP in patients with increased pepsin. In conclusion, our results show that pepsin in bronchial secretions may be elevated when IAP is increased, indicating microaspiration and potentially VAP.
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Acute intracerebral hemorrhage is a medical emergency with high mortality and morbidity. Neuroimaging has a fundamental role in the etiological diagnosis, patients monitoring and in the risk stratification of hematoma expansion and poor outcome. ⋯ Prevention of hematoma expansion is the main goal of these therapies and their efficacy is strongly time-dependent with a narrow time window. This review provides an update on the etiological diagnostic workup, acute treatment and prognosis of intracerebral hemorrhage.