Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Mar 1997
Tracheostomy tube occlusion protocol predicts significant tracheal obstruction to air flow in patients requiring prolonged mechanical ventilation.
This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that a tracheal tube occlusion protocol predicts clinically important obstruction to air flow in patients requiring prolonged mechanical ventilation, making routine bronchoscopy unnecessary. ⋯ A tracheal tube occlusion protocol can predict clinically important obstruction to air flow after prolonged mechanical ventilation.
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Critical care medicine · Mar 1997
Clinical TrialMonitoring interactions between spontaneous respiration and mechanical inflations in preterm neonates.
To determine the value of a new bedside monitor in assessing the interactions between spontaneous respiratory activity and ventilator inflations in preterm infants; and to monitor continuously the degree of patient-ventilator synchrony and the stability of spontaneous respiratory effort during different modes of ventilation and in response to care procedures. ⋯ We describe a new kind of bedside monitor for the Interpretation of respiratory data. Unlike other methods, it is able to give the clinician a continuous measure of patient-ventilator interaction which is easy to interpret. It appears to have wide-spread application in neonatal intensive care nurseries where the babies' own breathing efforts can affect the efficiency of respiration and cause unwanted physiologic instability. The monitor can be used to determine the optimal ventilatory settings to
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To look for relationships between the classification of sepsis and plasma cytokine concentrations. ⋯ According to the profiles of the cytokines, septic shock patients do not represent a homogeneous population. These profiles should be described in order to distinguish between patients, and the profiles may be useful to identify those patients susceptible to new therapies.
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Critical care medicine · Mar 1997
Colonization with antibiotic-resistant gram-negative organisms in a pediatric intensive care unit.
To measure the prevalence of colonization with antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative organisms and its association with potential risk factors, including antibiotic exposure, in a pediatric intensive care unit (ICU). ⋯ These data suggest that antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative organisms are a significant risk to intensively III children and that in many instances, they are imported into the unit or rapidly acquired from environmental reservoirs. Since risk factors for colonization are multiple, policies confined to antibiotic utilization within the ICU may have fixed, and possibly limited, benefit in their control.
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Critical care medicine · Mar 1997
Pulmonary vascular permeability after cardiopulmonary bypass and its relationship to oxidative stress.
To assess the relationship between oxidative stress resulting from cardiopulmonary bypass and the onset of increased pulmonary vascular permeability. ⋯ Pulmonary vascular permeability was significantly increased in patients postcardiopulmonary bypass compared with normal subjects. This patient population also had significantly increased plasma markers of lipid peroxidation compared with normal subjects. Cardiopulmonary bypass induced further increases in lipid peroxidation products but a substantial decrease in proteinaceous primary antioxidants. In the majority of patients, there was a significant correlation between the iron saturation of transferrin and the protein accumulation index.