Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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The relationship between multidrug resistance (MDR), inappropriate empiric therapy (IET), and mortality among patients with Acinetobacter baumannii (AB) remains unclear. We examined it using a large U.S. ⋯ In this large U.S. database, the prevalence of MDR-AB among patients with AB infection was > 80 %. Harboring MDR-AB increased the risk of receiving IET more than fivefold, and IET nearly doubled hospital mortality.
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In recent years there have been many developments in post-resuscitation care. We have investigated trends in patient characteristics and outcome following admission to UK critical care units following cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for the period 2004-2014. Our hypothesis is that there has been a reduction in risk-adjusted mortality during this period. ⋯ Risk-adjusted hospital mortality following admission to ICU after cardiac arrest has decreased significantly during the period 2004-2014. Over the same period the ICU length of stay and time to treatment withdrawal has increased significantly.
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The RIFLE classification was introduced in 2004 to describe the presence of acute kidney injury (AKI) and to define its clinical stage, based upon the serum creatinine level and urine output. The same criteria, although slightly modified, are used in the other scoring systems AKIN and KDIGO. Mortality and morbidity remain high in AKI, suggesting that current diagnostic methods are suboptimal, poorly accurate, and often timely inadequate in detecting the presence of early kidney injury. ⋯ Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin or cell cycle arrest biomarkers seem to be sensitive and specific enough to be used in conjunction with existing markers of AKI for better classifying renal injury as well as dysfunction. Improvements in diagnosis, risk identification, stratification, prognosis, and therapeutic monitoring may improve prevention and protection from organ damage and help to identify patients at risk, allowing individualized therapy. In this view, we may say that AKI diagnosis has finally moved from clinical to molecular level with potential benefits for the patients because similar progress has been shown in other disciplines.