Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Feb 2013
National study on the distribution, causes, and consequences of voluntarily reported medication errors between the ICU and non-ICU settings.
To compare the distribution, causes, and consequences of medication errors in the ICU with those in non-ICU settings. ⋯ More harmful errors are reported in ICU than non-ICU settings. Medication errors occur frequently in the administration phase in the ICU. When errors occur, patients and their caregivers are rarely informed. Consideration should be given to developing additional safeguards against ICU errors, particularly during drug administration, and eliminating barriers to error disclosures.
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Critical care medicine · Feb 2013
A model to create an efficient and equitable admission policy for patients arriving to the cardiothoracic ICU.
To develop queuing and simulation-based models to understand the relationship between ICU bed availability and operating room schedule to maximize the use of critical care resources and minimize case cancellation while providing equity to patients and surgeons. ⋯ Queuing theory and computer simulation can be used to model case flow through a cardiothoracic operating room and ICU. A dynamic admission policy that looks at current waiting time and expected ICU length of stay allows for increased equity between patients with only minimum losses of efficiency. This dynamic admission policy would seem to be a superior in maximizing case-flow. These results may be generalized to other surgical ICUs.
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Critical care medicine · Feb 2013
Effective treatment of mouse sepsis with an inhibitory antibody targeting integrin αvβ5.
Integrin αvβ5 has been identified as a regulator of vascular leak and endothelial permeability. We hypothesized that targeting αvβ5 could represent a viable treatment strategy for sepsis. ⋯ Our studies suggest that αvβ5 is an important regulator of the vascular endothelial leak response in sepsis and that αvβ5 blockade may provide a novel approach to treating this devastating disease syndrome.