Articles: intensive-care-units.
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To assess the potential for increasing the yield of donors by comparing the current pattern of brain death and organ donation in a neurosurgical unit with that reported in 1981 and with a recent national audit. ⋯ More organs may be lost owing to transplant team logistics than by failure to seek consent from relatives of brain dead patients. The estimated size of the pool of potential donors depends on what types of patients might be considered. Ensuring that all who die while being ventilated are tested for brain death and considering the potential for donation before withdrawing ventilation could yield more donors. Ventilating more patients who are hopelessly brain damaged to secure more donors raises ethical and economic issues.
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To examine the long term survival of critically ill patients admitted to an intensive therapy unit and to ascertain the effects of age, severity of illness, and diagnostic category at admission on survival. ⋯ Long term survival of patients treated in an intensive therapy unit is related to severity of illness and to age. The outcome from critical illness in the elderly population is poor.
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Critical care medicine · Nov 1990
Timing of intensive care unit admission in relation to ICU outcome.
This study assessed the relationship between admission time (from hospital admission to ICU admission) and mortality predicted by the Mortality Prediction Model (MPM), actual mortality, and resource use. All admissions, except elective surgery patients, to the general medical/surgical ICU of a tertiary care hospital during a 24-month period were studied (n = 1,889). ⋯ Transfers had higher predicted and actual mortality, and used more resources than nontransfer patients. Time from hospital admission to ICU admission can be a potentially useful variable in models of ICU outcome.
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ICU nurses who are satisfied with their work are more likely to be retained, leading to institutional cost savings. In this study, higher levels of nurse-physician collaboration in making decisions about patient care were found to be very important to nurses' satisfaction.
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Iatrogenic illness may be an important determinant of the need for pediatric intensive care. We prospectively evaluated consecutive admissions to a pediatric ICU (PICU) over two time periods totaling 6 months. Twenty-five (4.6%) admissions were necessitated by iatrogenic illnesses. ⋯ One (3.7%) patient with iatrogenic illness died. As a group, patients with iatrogenic illness were at a risk of dying similar to other patients. We conclude that iatrogenic illness is a significant cause of PICU admission.