BMC research notes
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Cardiopulmonary arrest in pregnancy has a very high maternal and fetal mortality rate. We report a case of successful maternal and neonatal survival in association with emergency cesarean section of a schizophrenic pregnant patient. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of cardiopulmonary arrest in a pregnant woman with schizophrenia. ⋯ We speculate that the cause of cardiopulmonary arrest was aspiration due to seizure, and it is possible that a neurological response was evoked by administration of antipsychotic drugs and/or by eclampsia. Medical staff must be aware of the possibility of cardiopulmonary arrest in pregnant women with schizophrenia.
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This manuscript presents the concerns around the increasingly common problem of not having readily available or useful "gold standard" measurements. This issue is particularly important in critical care where many measurements used in decision making are surrogates of what we would truly wish to use. ⋯ The question is how does one even begin to develop new measurements or surrogates if one has no gold standard to compare with?We raise this issue concisely with a specific example from mechanical ventilation, a core bread and butter therapy in critical care that is also a leading cause of length of stay and cost of care. Our proposed solution centers around a hierarchical validation approach that we believe would ameliorate ethics issues around radiation exposure that make current gold standard measures clinically infeasible, and thus provide a pathway to create a (new) gold standard.
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Data on prevalence rates of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in different patient populations are scarce. Most studies on this topic focus on older patients or patients with malignancies, immobilization or thrombophilia. Less is known about the VTE risk profile of non-surgical patients presenting with a variety of medical diseases of differing severity. Aim of the present study was to investigate VTE prevalence in a pospective cohort study of ambulatory medical intensive care unit patients within 24 h after acute admission. ⋯ Prevalent VTE and concomitant PE were frequent in acutely admitted ICU patients.
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Vasopressin administration has been tested in cardiac arrest. However it has not been tested when cardiac arrest occurs in certain circumstances, as in sepsis, where it may have a major role. The aim of the study was to investigate survival after cardiac arrest in a septic porcine model compared with healthy animals and to explore the effectiveness of adding vasopressin vs epinephrine alone administration. ⋯ Septic piglets have fewer chances to survive after cardiac arrest. No difference in outcome was observed when the first dose of epinephrine was replaced with vasopressin to treat cardiac arrest in the LPS-treated animals.
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Late presentations of congenital diaphragmatic hernia are rare and differ from the classic neonatal presentation. The association with other congenital malformations in children, mainly intestinal malrotation, is well documented. The diagnosis of this association in adults is very rare, and depends on a high degree of suspicion. ⋯ This case shows a rare association of two rare conditions in adults, and highlights the challenge in reaching the diagnosis and management options.