Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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Veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (V-A ECMO) is an increasingly adopted life-saving mechanical circulatory support for a number of potentially reversible or treatable cardiac diseases. It is also started as a bridge-to-transplantation/ventricular assist device in the case of unrecoverable cardiac or cardio-respiratory illness. In recent years, principally for non-post-cardiotomy shock, peripheral cannulation using the femoral vessels has been the approach of choice because it does not need the chest opening, can be quickly established, can be applied percutaneously, and is less likely to cause bleeding and infections than central cannulation. ⋯ Data on this topic are highly fragmentary, and there are no clear-cut recommendations. Accordingly, the strategies adopted to cope with this complication vary a great deal, ranging from preventive placement of antegrade distal perfusion cannulas to rescue interventions and vascular surgery after the complication has manifested. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of limb ischemia during femoral cannulation for VA-ECMO in adults, focusing on incidence, tools for early diagnosis, risk factors, and preventive and treating strategies.
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Bedside functional hemodynamic assessment has gained in popularity in the last years to overcome the limitations of static or dynamic indexes in predicting fluid responsiveness. The aim of this systematic review and metanalysis of studies is to investigate the reliability of the functional hemodynamic tests (FHTs) used to assess fluid responsiveness in adult patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) and operating room (OR). ⋯ The EEOT and the mini-FC reliably predict fluid responsiveness in the ICU and OR. Other FHTs have been tested insofar in heterogeneous clinical settings and, despite promising results, warrant further investigations.
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We assessed the effect of liberal versus restrictive red blood cell transfusion strategy on survival outcome in sepsis or septic shock by systematically reviewing the literature and synthesizing evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). ⋯ We could not show any difference in 28- or 30-day mortality between the liberal and restrictive transfusion strategies in sepsis or septic shock patients by meta-analysis of RCTs. Our results should be interpreted with caution due to the existence of heterogeneity. As sepsis complicates a potentially wide range of underlying diseases, further trials in carefully selected populations are anticipated.
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Observational Study
Sex-specific differences in survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a nationwide, population-based observational study.
It remains unclear whether men have more favorable survival outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) than women. ⋯ No significant sex-specific differences were found in the rates of 1-month survival and neurologically intact survival after OHCA.