Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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The need for a reliable neurological evaluation in severely brain-injured patients conflicts with sedation, which is routinely administered. Helbok and colleagues prospectively evaluated in a small cohort of 20 sedated severely brain-injured patients the effects of a wakeup test on intracranial pressure (ICP), brain tissue oxygen tension and brain metabolism. The test has been considered potentially risky on 34% of the study days. ⋯ In this cohort, the information gained with the wake-up test has been negligible. Given the current little knowledge about the benefits of interruption of continuous sedation in brain-injured patients, it is extremely important to adopt multiple monitoring modalities in neurocritical care in order to escape wake-up tests in those patients who will potentially be harmed by this procedure. Once the clinical condition will improve, sedation needs to be tapered and suspended as soon as possible.
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The purpose of this study was to perform a descriptive, content-based analysis on the different forms of documentation for in-flight medical emergencies that are currently provided in the emergency medical kits on board commercial airlines. ⋯ The data in this study illustrate a large variation in the documentation of in-flight medical emergencies by different airlines. A higher degree of standardization is preferable to increase the data quality in epidemiologic aeromedical research in the future.
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Hyperlactatemia represents one prominent component of the metabolic response to sepsis. In critically ill patients, hyperlactatemia is related to the severity of the underlying condition. Both an increased production and a decreased utilization and clearance might be involved in this process, but their relative contribution remains unknown. The present study aimed at assessing systemic and muscle lactate production and systemic lactate clearance in healthy human volunteers, using intravenous endotoxin (LPS) challenge. ⋯ LPS administration increases lactatemia by increasing lactate production rather than by decreasing lactate clearance. Muscle is, however, unlikely to be a major contributor to this increase in lactate production.
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Comment
Stenting versus aggressive medical therapy for intracranial arterial stenosis: more harm than good.
Atherosclerotic intracranial arterial stenosis is an important cause of stroke that is increasingly being treated with percutaneous transluminal angioplasty and stenting (PTAS) to prevent recurrent stroke. However, PTAS has not been compared with medical management in a randomized trial. ⋯ In patients with intracranial arterial stenosis, aggressive medical management was superior to PTAS with the use of the Wingspan stent system, both because the risk of early stroke after PTAS was high and because the risk of stroke with aggressive medical therapy alone was lower than expected.
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The paper by Park and colleagues in the previous issue of Critical Care highlights vascular changes in electrical injury and finds them to be relatively long-lasting and significant. This finding is consistent with long-lasting disability seen clinically in electrically injured patients. Furthermore, the authors report that the changes seen in the shocked part of the body are accompanied by similar changes that are measurable in other parts of the body but that are not involved with electric current. ⋯ Recent psychiatric research indicates the importance of circulating cortisol and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which causes loss of hippocampal volume, in the genesis of depression. This psychiatric research has stimulated a speculative theory of the genesis of the psychological effects of electric shock. The paper by Park and colleagues is circumstantial support for the possibility that such a process is real and available.