Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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This article is one of ten reviews selected from the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2015 and co-published as a series in Critical Care. Other articles in the series can be found online at http://ccforum.com/series/annualupdate2015. Further information about the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine is available from http://www.springer.com/series/8901.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Clinical impact of stress dose steroids in patients with septic shock: insights from the PROWESS-Shock trial.
The aim of our study was to evaluate the clinical impact of the administration of intravenous steroids, alone or in conjunction with drotrecogin-alfa (activated) (DrotAA), on the outcomes in septic shock patients. ⋯ In the present study of septic shock patients, after adjustment for treatment selection bias, we were unable to find noticeable positive impact from intravenous steroids for treatment of septic shock at baseline either in patients randomized for DrotAA or placebo.
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A clinical suspicion of infection is mandatory for diagnosing sepsis in patients with a systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Yet, the accuracy of categorizing critically ill patients presenting to the intensive care unit (ICU) as being infected or not is unknown. We therefore assessed the likelihood of infection in patients who were treated for sepsis upon admission to the ICU, and quantified the association between plausibility of infection and mortality. ⋯ This study is the first prospective analysis to show that the clinical diagnosis of sepsis upon ICU admission corresponds poorly with the presence of infection on post-hoc assessment. A higher likelihood of infection does not adversely influence outcome in this population.
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Observational Study
Increase in cerebral oxygenation during advanced life support in out-of-hospital patients is associated with return of spontaneous circulation.
By maintaining sufficient cerebral blood flow and oxygenation, the goal of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is to preserve the pre-arrest neurological state. To date, cerebral monitoring abilities during CPR have been limited. Therefore, we investigated the time-course of cerebral oxygen saturation values (rSO₂) during advanced life support in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Our primary aim was to compare rSO₂ values during advanced life support from patients with return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) to patients who did not achieve ROSC. ⋯ During pre-hospital advanced life support, higher increases in rSO₂ are observed in patients attaining ROSC, even before ROSC was clinically determined. Our findings suggest that rSO₂ could be used in the future to guide patient tailored treatment during cardiac arrest and could therefore be a surrogate marker of the systemic oxygenation state of the patient.
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Since normal or high central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO₂) values cannot discriminate if tissue perfusion is adequate, integrating other markers of tissue hypoxia, such as central venous-to-arterial carbon dioxide difference (PcvaCO₂ gap) has been proposed. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the ability of the PcvaCO₂ gap and the PcvaCO₂/arterial-venous oxygen content difference ratio (PcvaCO₂/CavO₂) to predict lactate evolution in septic shock. ⋯ In a population of septic shock patients with normalized MAP and ScvO₂, the presence of elevated PcvaCO₂/CavO₂ ratio significantly reduced the odds of adequate lactate clearance during the following hours.