Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases
-
Tuberc Respir Dis (Seoul) · Jul 2015
Extensive Bilateral Lemierre Syndrome due to Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis in a Patient with Lung Adenocarcinoma.
Lemierre syndrome (LS) is a septic thrombophlebitis of the internal jugular vein (IJV) following an oropharyngeal infection. LS is commonly caused by normal anaerobic flora and treated with appropriate antibiotics and anticoagulation therapy. Although the incidence of disease is very rare, 15% cases of LS are fatal even in the antibiotic era because of disseminated septic thromboemboli. ⋯ However, pulmonary thromboembolism developed and methicillin-resistant S. epidermidis was identified in the bacterial culture. Despite intensive antibiotic and anticoagulation therapies, extensive septic thrombophlebitis involving the bilateral IJV and superior vena cava developed. Adjunctive catheter-directed thrombolysis and superior vena cava stenting were performed and the patient received antibiotic therapy for an additional 4 weeks, resulting in complete recovery.
-
Tuberc Respir Dis (Seoul) · Jul 2015
ReviewUpdate of Sepsis: Recent Evidences about Early Goal Directed Therapy.
Severe sepsis and septic shock is a life-threatening disease. It is combined with multi-organ failure. In the past decade, early goal directed therapy has been proposed as an effective treatment strategy for better outcome. ⋯ However, it is unclear which elements of early goal directed therapy contributed to the better outcome. Recent prospective and randomized trials suggested that some elements of early goal directed therapy did not have any effect on the outcome benefit. In this paper, recent articles about early goal directed therapy will be reviewed and the effectiveness of individual elements of early goal directed therapy will be discussed.
-
The intensive care unit (ICU) is the most common place to die. Also, ethical conflicts among stakeholders occur frequently in the ICU. Thus, ICU clinicians should be competent in all aspects for ethical decision-making. ⋯ To improve the quality of care, handling ethical conflicts properly is emerging as a vital and more comprehensive area. The ICU physicians themselves need to be more sensitive to behavioral conflicts and enable shared decision making in end-of-life care. At the same time, the institutions and administrators should develop their processes to find and resolve common ethical problems in their ICUs.
-
Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) is a type of cardiopulmonary bypass. It is an artificial means of supplying oxygen and removing CO2 on behalf of damaged lungs while patients are recovering from underlying diseases. ⋯ In addition, the improvement of clinicians' technique and outcome is increasing their application to patients with acute respiratory distress. In this regard, the purpose of this review is to introduce the physiological principles, risk factors, and advantages of ECLS, clinical rationale for using ECLS, ventilatory strategy during ECLS, which are still causing different opinions, the weaning from ECLS, and the use of anticoagulant.