Medicina intensiva
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The clinical care of hospitalized seriously ill patients must be suitably proportionate independently of the functional unit to which they have been admitted. Most of these patients are admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where uninterrupted management is provided, with important technological and care resources. However, hospitalization of the seriously ill patient must be understood as a continuum starting and ending beyond hospital stay. ⋯ In this context, our ICU has established two strategic lines. One consists of the identification of patients at risk outside the Unit and is based on the recognition, diagnostic orientation and early treatment of the seriously ill patient, in collaboration with other clinical specialties and independently of the hospital area to which the patient has been admitted. The second line in turn comprises clinical care within the actual Unit, and is based on the promotion of safety and the vigilance of nosocomial infections.
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Early warning systems (EWS) identify patients at risk with a view to improving morbidity and mortality rates using early therapeutic and transfer actions. We have recently implemented an EWS that focuses on two main aspects: the guidance of care after discharge from the ICU, and recognition of the onset of deteriorating health among adult patients in general wards through physiologically based early warning scores.
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To describe the epidemiology, clinical manifestations and evolutive characteristics of pediatric patients with severe head injury (SHI). ⋯ a) The incidence of traffic accidents has decreased in the last decade in the studied population; b) patients with SHI in which ICP was monitored showed a high incidence of intracranial hypertension; c) morbidity-mortality among pediatric patients with SHI has decreased over the course of the study period.
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The clinical use of human tissues is a therapeutic reality in many diseases, observing a spectacular increase in their demand in recent years. This has also generated an increase in the demand for donors which, in regarding to obtaining tissues, is not limited to brain death donors. Consequently, tissues obtained from cardiorespiratory arrest donors must be promoted in our hospitals. ⋯ During this period, an awareness and health care staff information campaign was carried out in the Emergency and Hemodynamic areas. The next step will be to extend this campaign to the rest of the hospital staff. We believe that the mechanisms needed to obtain hospital staff collaboration in the detection of multi-tissue donors is to offer updated information on the indications and therapeutic advantages of clinical use of human tissues, favoring hospital awareness on this subject and therefore the detection of potential donors.