Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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In the previous issue of Critical Care, Raimondi and colleagues investigate whether lung ultrasonography has utility for the assessment of respiratory distress in the neonate. This commentary reviews the results and implications of their study.
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Catheters are most often colonized and become infected via the skin and their external surfaces in the ICU. Therefore, topical antimicrobials, including medical honey, placed at the insertion site should decrease skin colonization and catheter infections. This commentary reviews the main studies on, and the possible reasons of, topical antimicrobial failure in ICUs compared to the reported efficacy of chlorhexidine-impregnated dressings.
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Editorial Comment
Video laryngoscopy improves intubation success and reduces esophageal intubations compared with direct laryngoscopy in the medical intensive care unit.
Urgent and emergent airway management outside the operating room is fraught with complications due to the nature of its acuity, single or multiple system dysfunction or failure, and physiological disturbances. These provide a challenge to the airway team and place the patient at grave risk for potentially life-threatening airway and hemodynamics-related consequences. ⋯ Yet to assume that airway management difficulties can be erased by incorporating a new device is optimistic but naïve. In regard to patient safety, the device is just one piece of the airway puzzle.
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Prior reports suggest that restrictive ICU visitation policies can negatively impact patients and their loved ones. However, visitation practices in US ICUs, and the hospital factors associated with them, are not well described. ⋯ In 2008 the overwhelming majority of US ICUs in this study had restrictive visitation policies. Wide variability in visitation policies suggests that further study into the impact of ICU visitations on care and outcomes remains necessary to standardize practice.