QJM : monthly journal of the Association of Physicians
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End-of-life care decisions, including treatment such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), are complex issues requiring a patient to have the capacity for effective decision-making. ⋯ Geriatricians make significantly more CPR decisions than general physicians do, but still involve patient and family views in only a minority of cases, and an assessment of capacity is rarely explicitly documented. We suggest a three-step approach to clinical decision making, to increase both the volume and the quality of CPR decisions, which may be improved further by the use of information leaflets for patients and their families.
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Case Reports Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Respiratory failure in acute organophosphorus pesticide self-poisoning.
Acute organophosphorus (OP) pesticide poisoning is a major clinical problem in the developing world. Textbooks ascribe most deaths to respiratory failure occurring in one of two distinct clinical syndromes: acute cholinergic respiratory failure or the intermediate syndrome. Delayed failure appears to be due to respiratory muscle weakness, but its pathophysiology is unclear. ⋯ Respiratory failure did not occur as two discrete clinical syndromes within distinct time frames. Instead, the pattern of failure was variable and overlapped in some patients. There seemed to be two underlying mechanisms (an early acute mixed central and peripheral respiratory failure, and a late peripheral respiratory failure) rather than two distinct clinical syndromes.
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Comparative Study
Rapid-access chest pain clinics and the traditional cardiology out-patient clinic.
The National Service Framework for coronary heart disease recommends rapid-access chest pain clinics (RACPCs) for cardiological assessment of new-onset chest pain within 2 weeks of referral. ⋯ The RACPC has provided efficient and effective substitution for the OPCC in the assessment of new chest pain referrals according to pre-defined referral criteria. Broadening the referral criterion of the RACPC to patients with chest pain of >4 weeks duration would result in more referrals.
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Vasopressin is a peptide synthesized in the hypothalamus whose primary role is in fluid homeostasis. It has recently gained interest as a potential agent in the treatment of cardiorespiratory arrest. Initial human studies have shown benefits with vasopressin in patients with out of hospital ventricular fibrillation and asystolic cardiac arrest. ⋯ Animal studies have shown vasopressin to be a vasodilator in the pulmonary vascular system of rats, under normoxic and hypoxic conditions, with conflicting results in canines. Human studies have shown conflicting results with increases, decreases and no changes seen in pulmonary artery pressures of patients with a variety of clinical conditions. Research needs to be done in patients with pulmonary hypertension regarding the potential role of vasopressin during cardiac arrest in this subgroup.