Articles: intensive-care-units.
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Drug use patterns observed in an intensive care unit (ICU) at a large tertiary teaching hospital (Brigham & Women's Hospital [BWH], Boston) were documented and compared with patterns reported from ICUs of hospitals at two other sites. Antibiotics, analgesics, and H2 antagonists were the most frequently prescribed classes of drugs. ⋯ Pharmacy charges for ICU care at BWH were calculated with respect to total hospitalization charges and were found to account for 10% of total charges. Identifying drug use patterns in ICUs--an area of potentially high drug use, risk, and cost--provides valuable information for P & T Committees as well as for medical staff quality assurance and usage evaluation functions.
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Critical care medicine · Feb 1991
Comparative Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical TrialImproved outcomes from tertiary center pediatric intensive care: a statewide comparison of tertiary and nontertiary care facilities.
To compare outcomes from pediatric intensive care in hospitals with different levels of resources. ⋯ Care of the most seriously ill children in tertiary pediatric ICUs could improve their chances of survival.
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Critical care medicine · Feb 1991
Mortality prediction models in intensive care: acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II and mortality prediction model compared.
To compare the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II) score with the Mortality Prediction Model (MPM). ⋯ Our investigation indicates that both APACHE II and MPM are good predictors of hospital outcome in our population, but the level of intensive care services received before conventional ICU admission modifies accuracy of predictive models. In any study of outcome using comparative studies of classification systems, confounding biases should be measured.
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Comput Methods Programs Biomed · Feb 1991
The median filter as a preprocessor for a patient monitor limit alarm system in intensive care.
We studied the effects of removing brief variations in the monitoring data on the quality of limit alarms during the postoperative haemodynamic monitoring of cardiac patients. The variations were removed by median filtering. The false alarm frequency was reduced by more than two-thirds compared with a typical patient monitor. ⋯ The proportion of true alarms increased from 12% to 49% as compared to a typical patient monitor. The average false alarm frequency was 4.5 alarms per monitored hour. No correct alarms were missed.