Crit Care Resusc
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Observational Study
The epidemiology of in-hospital cardiac arrests in Australia: a prospective multicentre observational study.
Australian in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) literature is limited, and mostly published before rapid response teams (RRTs). Contemporary data may inform strategies to improve IHCA outcomes. ⋯ Among seven Australian hospitals, IHCAs were infrequent, mostly occurred in older medical patients early in the hospital admission. Most were non-shockable, ICU therapy was extensive and nearly two-thirds of patients died in hospital. Further strategies are needed to prevent and improve ICHA outcomes.
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Ionising radiation is a valuable tool in modern medicine including for patients in an intensive care unit (ICU). However, clinicians are faced with a trade-off between benefit of information received from procedure versus risks associated with radiation. As a first step to understanding the risk and benefits of radiation exposure to ICU patients, we aimed to assess the cumulative levels of ionising radiation patients receive during their ICU stay. ⋯ Most ICU patients received low CED during their stay, with the majority receiving less than the recommended limit for members of the public (1 mSv). These results may educate clinicians regarding radiation exposures in ICU settings, highlighting the relatively low exposures and thus low risk to the patients.
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Comparative Study
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients requiring critical care: characteristics, resource use, and outcomes.
To provide a contemporary description of the demographics, characteristics and outcomes of critically ill Indigenous patients in Australia. ⋯ Indigenous patients, especially young Indigenous patients, were disproportionately represented in Australian ICUs, particularly for sepsis. The high level of acute illness and high proportion of emergency admissions could be interpreted as representing delayed presentation, which, with a higher re-admission rate, suggest access barriers to health care may exist. Nevertheless, there was no mortality gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians during a hospital admission for critical illness.