Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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The outcomes of patients ventilated for longer than average are unclear, in part because of the lack of an accepted definition of prolonged mechanical ventilation (PMV). To better understand the implications of PMV provision, we compared one-year health outcomes between two common definitions of PMV as well as between PMV patients and those ventilated for shorter periods of time. ⋯ Contrasting definitions of PMV capture significantly different patient populations, with > or = 21 days of ventilation specifying the most resource-intensive recipients of critical care. PMV patients, particularly the elderly, suffer from a significant burden of costly, chronic critical illness and are at high risk for death throughout the first year after intensive care.
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Multicenter Study
The impact of the introduction of critical care outreach services in England: a multicentre interrupted time-series analysis.
Critical care outreach services (CCOS) have been widely introduced in England with little rigorous evaluation. We undertook a multicentre interrupted time-series analysis of the impact of CCOS, as characterised by the case mix, outcome and activity of admissions to adult, general critical care units in England. ⋯ The observational nature of the study limits its ability to infer causality. Although associations were observed with characteristics of patients admitted to critical care units, there was no clear evidence that CCOS have a big impact on the outcomes of these patients, or for characteristics of what should form the optimal CCOS.
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Outcomes following bacterial meningitis are significantly improved by adjunctive treatment with corticosteroids. However, little is known about the levels and significance of intrathecal endogenous cortisol. The aim of this study was to assess cortisol as a biological and diagnostic marker in patients with bacterial meningitis. ⋯ CSF cortisol levels in patients with bacterial meningitis are highly elevated and correlate with disease severity. Moreover, our findings also suggest that intrathecal cortisol may serve as a valuable marker in discriminating between bacterial and aseptic meningitis.
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There is a paucity of published data on tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) in the critically ill. In a critically ill cohort, we studied the distribution of TDI and its correlation with other echocardiographic indices of preload. To aid hypothesis generation and sample size calculation, associations between echocardiographic variables, including the ratio of peak early diastolic transmitral velocity (E) to peak early diastolic mitral annular velocity (E'), and mortality were also explored. ⋯ There was a wide range of TDI values. TDI evidence of diastolic dysfunction was common. E/E' did not correlate strongly with other echocardiographic indices of preload. Further evaluation of echocardiographic variables, particularly left ventricular end-systolic volume, for risk stratification in the critically ill appears warranted.
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Inhalation injury in combination with a severe thermal injury increases mortality. Alterations in inflammatory mediators, such as cytokines, contribute to the incidence of multi-organ failure and mortality. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of inhalation injury on cytokine expression in severely burned children. ⋯ In the present study, we show that an inhalation injury causes alterations in IL-7 and IL-12p70. There were no increased levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, indicating that an inhalation injury in addition to a burn injury does not augment the systemic inflammatory response early after burn.