Articles: intensive-care-units.
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The development and establishment of intensive care units for adult patients requires a far-reaching subdivision into surgical and conservatively oriented intensive care for qualitative and quantitative reasons. Insufficiently substantiated claims to monopolization of intensive care techniques that are polemically asserted have to be strongly contradicted. The present paper is concerned with approved structural concepts of intensive care developed by Deutsche Krankenhausgesellschaft and various medical societies. They are supplemented by personal experience in the field of internal intensive care.
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Dimens Crit Care Nurs · Mar 1991
Case ReportsEnsuring a safe ICU stay for your confused elderly patient.
When elderly patients who are admitted to a Coronary Care Unit become confused, they not only become nursing management problems, they are also at increased risk of further injury and even death. Critical care nurses who are knowledgeable regarding assessing, preventing, and treating confusion can prevent complications for these vulnerable patients.
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Comparative Study
Preoperative pulmonary status and postoperative extubation outcome of patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether factors associated with impaired pulmonary function were predictive of postoperative extubation outcome (extubation according to protocol or delayed extubation) in a sample of patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. Forty-seven patients were assessed before surgery and after postoperative extubation using a noninvasive assessment technique. Positive preoperative affect was the sole factor associated with extubation outcome in this sample of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. ⋯ Subjects with delayed extubations had a greater incidence of postoperative atelectasis (p = 0.02). They also had significantly longer stays in the surgical intensive care unit (p = 0.01) and the hospital (p = 0.05). Preoperative pulmonary function, age, sex, and history of smoking were not associated with postoperative extubation outcome.