Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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Prediction of invasive candidal infection in critically ill patients with severe acute pancreatitis.
Patients with severe acute pancreatitis are at risk of candidal infections carrying the potential risk of an increase in mortality. Since early diagnosis is problematic, several clinical risk scores have been developed to identify patients at risk. Such patients may benefit from prophylactic antifungal therapy while those patients who have a low risk of infection may not benefit and may be harmed. The aim of this study was to assess the validity and discrimination of existing risk scores for invasive candidal infections in patients with severe acute pancreatitis. ⋯ In this study the Candida Colonisation Index Score was the most accurate and discriminative test at identifying which patients with severe acute pancreatitis are at risk of developing candidal infection. However its low sensitivity may limit its clinical usefulness.
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The lung-protective mechanical ventilation strategy has been standard practice for management of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) for more than a decade. Observational data, small randomized studies and two recent systematic reviews suggest that lung protective ventilation is both safe and potentially beneficial in patients who do not have ARDS at the onset of mechanical ventilation. ⋯ Patients with a stiff chest wall may tolerate higher plateau pressure targets (approximately 35 cmH2O) while those with severe ARDS and ventilator asynchrony may require a short-term neuromuscular blockade. Given the difficulty in timely identification of patients with or at risk of ARDS and both the safety and potential benefit in patients without ARDS, lung-protective mechanical ventilation is recommended as an initial approach to mechanical ventilation in both perioperative and critical care settings.
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Analysis of Chinese ICU staffing in relation to final outcome yields comparable results as those reported in Western ICUs. This underlines the general principle that we would all like to apply in our hospitals; that is, availability of knowledgeable staff that are adequately trained to recognize and treat an acutely deteriorating critically ill patient as soon as possible.
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Critical Care research involves an increasing level of technical and clinical interventions for the unconscious patient. If the general public has a negative (unfavourable) view of surrogate consent, low recruitment rates are likely. Results bias will be introduced if study populations are small, hindering knowledge generation and transfer through research. In the rapidly expanding healthcare industry of South East Asia, opportunities for critical care research will grow given a positive willingness (favourability) by the general public to act as a surrogate in the consent process when the (unconscious) patient cannot consent for him/herself. ⋯ Given the hypothetical scenarios presented in this study, the odds of a person having a positive view and willingness to be consented to a critical care research study on the advice of another (surrogate consent) was greater than for those who had a negative or unfavourable view. Nurses may be disadvantaged in leading on the recruitment process due to a preference for information to be delivered by medically qualified clinicians. In the setting of South East Asia, cultural attitudes to nurse-led research in critical care must be taken in to consideration in the multidisciplinary approaches to building the research team.