Articles: intensive-care-units.
-
Critical care medicine · Feb 1999
Comparative StudyA cost analysis of enterally administered lorazepam in the pediatric intensive care unit.
To determine the cost savings of replacing intravenous midazolam with enterally administered lorazepam in mechanically ventilated children who require long-term continuous sedation. ⋯ Transitioning from intravenous midazolam to enterally administered lorazepam in critically ill children who require long-term sedation results in significant cost savings. The oral formulation of lorazepam was convenient to use, inexpensive, and effective in maintaining a continuous and appropriate level of sedation once midazolam was discontinued.
-
J Clin Monit Comput · Feb 1999
A strategy for developing practice guidelines for the ICU using automated knowledge acquisition techniques.
To implement practice guideline entry tools in a reminder system in order to provide decision support to health care workers in clinical care and emergency care environments. To design a knowledge acquisition environment that enables physicians to formulate, update, and verify guidelines without the assistance of a knowledge engineer. ⋯ These first results demonstrate that this bottom-up knowledge acquisition strategy, implemented by the automated knowledge acquisition tools, enables medical specialists to improve the quality of computer support in an ICU without assistance of a knowledge engineer.
-
Continuous arterial blood gas monitoring is a new technology based on the combination of opto-chemical and fiber-optic detectors that can measure pH, PCO2, PO2, and temperature on a continuous basis via a sensor placed in an artery. ⋯ The continuous arterial blood gas sensor is capable of clinically accurate blood gas measurements. This technology provides the clinician with immediate data that can allow rapid interventions in unstable patients.
-
Critical care medicine · Feb 1999
Comparative StudyEffects of an organized critical care service on outcomes and resource utilization: a cohort study.
To determine whether the presence of an on-site, organized, supervised critical service improves care and decreases resource utilization. ⋯ Critical care interventions are expensive and have a narrow safety margin. It is essential to develop structured and validated approaches to study the delivery of this resource. In this study, the critical care service model performed favorably both in terms of quality and cost.
-
Intensive care medicine · Feb 1999
Multicenter StudyPrognostic performance and customization of the SAPS II: results of a multicenter Austrian study. Simplified Acute Physiology Score.
To evaluate the prognostic performance of the original Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II in Austrian intensive care patients and to evaluate the impact of customization. ⋯ SAPS II was not well calibrated when applied to all patients. However, it performed well for patients with cardiovascular diseases as the primary reason for admission and may thus be applied to these patients. Standardized mortality ratios that are calculated from scoring systems without known calibration must be viewed with skepticism.