Minerva anestesiologica
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Fluid management is a crucial issue in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Assessment of preload responsiveness should help to define the best fluid strategy. Arterial pulse pressure variation (PPV), which represents the amplitude of the respiratory changes in arterial pulse pressure, is considered as a marker of preload responsiveness in patients mechanically ventilated and fully adapted to their ventilator. ⋯ Although a PPV >10-12% still keeps its good predictive value, a lower PPV (<10%) is far to guarantee fluid unresponsiveness since many false-negative cases can be encountered in this setting. Thus, performance of alternative preload responsiveness tests such as passive leg raising or end-expiratory occlusion tests, is necessary when low PPV values are measured. This review addresses the meaning of PPV, its conditions of use and its limits in ARDS patients.
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Minerva anestesiologica · Apr 2013
Absent SEP during therapeutic hypothermia did not reappear after re-warming in comatose patients following cardiac arrest.
Early prediction of neurological outcome for patients resuscitated from cardiac arrest (CA) is a challenging task. Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) has been shown to improve neurological outcome after CA. Two recent studies indicated that somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) recorded during TH retains high prediction value for poor neurological outcome. It remains unclear whether TH can influence the recovery of bilaterally absent (BA) N20 after re-warming. The primary endpoint of the present study was to evaluate if patients with BA SEPs during TH can recover cortical responses after re-warming. The secondary endpoint was to evaluate whether BA SEPs recorded during TH retains its prediction value for poor neurological outcome as in normothermic patients. ⋯ In a single centre cohort of comatose CA patients, our results showed that all patients with absent SEPs during early recording (6-24 hours) during TH showed bilaterally absent SEPs after re-warming. As a secondary result we confirmed previous data that BA SEPs during TH retains its prognostic value for poor neurological outcome, as in normothermic patients.