How ARDS Fuels Delirium in the ICU
This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated 13 studies (encompassing 10,052 patients) to understand the relationship between Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and delirium. Delirium is remarkably common,... read more
Personalizing Tachycardia to Predict ICU Mortality
Traditional Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) criteria define tachycardia as a heart rate (HR) > 90 beats per minute. However, this static number is a poor screening tool for severe conditions like sepsis due... read more
Sepsis Management in Resource-limited Settings
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. It constitutes a unique source of knowledge and guidance for all healthcare workers who care for patients with sepsis and septic shock in resource-limited settings. More... read more
Rethinking Blood Thinners: Do Mild Brain Injuries Need Maxi Care?
The Brain Injury Guidelines (BIG) classify traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) into three tiers to dictate treatment. Patients taking pre-injury blood thinners (anticoagulants or antiplatelets) are automatically upgraded to the... read more
Tailoring the Breath: Personalized PEEP for ARDS Subphenotypes
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) varies wildly between patients, leading to unpredictable outcomes and inconsistent responses to ventilator settings like Positive End-Expiratory Pressure (PEEP). Researchers used... read more
Ketamine: A Safer Route to Relief for Severe Trauma?
The Challenge: Severely injured trauma patients face intense pain and high opioid exposure, increasing their risk for long-term complications. While alternative pain management strategies are recommended, standard options... read more
Decoding Sepsis: Fast-Tracking Diagnosis with SeptiCyte RAPID
SeptiCyte RAPID is an FDA-cleared gene expression test that measures a patient's immune response to help diagnose sepsis. It provides a "SeptiScore" from 0 to 15, divided into four bands that indicate the likelihood of sepsis... read more
ICU Quick Drug Guide 2nd Edition
This book provides precise, must-have drug information for the ICU. It offers essential, evidence-based practice guidelines for the critical care setting. Now in its fully revised and expanded second edition, ICU Quick Drug... read more
Predictive Pneumonia Care: Harnessing Machine Learning to Foresee Early Ventilator Need
Pneumonia remains a leading critical illness in the ICU, with many patients quickly deteriorating into respiratory failure that requires invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Because traditional clinical decisions often... read more
Handbook of Sepsis
This recently released practically oriented book provides an up-to-date overview of all significant aspects of the pathogenesis of sepsis and its management, including within the ICU. Readers will find information on... read more
Automated Airway Care: The MICROINHALO Trial on Cuff Pressure and VAP Prevention
The MICROINHALO trial, an international cluster-randomized study across 10 ICUs, investigated whether automated airway management could reduce bacterial tracheal colonization in 250 critically ill intubated patients. The... read more
Blood, Sweat, and the ICU: Conquering Emergencies in Hematological Malignancies
Breakthroughs in cancer therapies and supportive care have dramatically improved life expectancy for patients with hematological malignancies (HM). However, living longer means more patients are surviving long enough to encounter... read more
Navigating the Complexities of ICU Intubation in Obesity
Managing the airway of critically ill patients with obesity in the ICU presents a high-stakes combination of anatomical and physiological hurdles. Increased adipose tissue narrows the upper airway and makes soft tissues highly... read more
Mastering Interprofessional Rehabilitation Across the ICU Continuum
Rehabilitation is a fundamental cornerstone of modern intensive care, crucial for minimizing long-term disability and maximizing a patient's functional recovery. Today's ICU patients are older, have multiple co-existing... read more
Wake-Up Call in Neurocritical Care: Propofol Outperforms Combined Sedation for Brain-Injured Patients
Sedation is vital for managing neurocritical care patients with acute brain injuries, yet finding the optimal strategy remains highly debated. This retrospective observational study analyzed 147 adult patients on invasive... read more
Handbook of Critical Care Medicine
The management of critically ill patients is an important and integral part of internal medicine practice. Often, junior doctors and medical students receive insufficient training in this area of medicine. There are important... read more
Parsing Pneumonia: Dual Definitions of Severe CABP Reveal Overlapping Risks and High Mortality
This study analyzed 67,439 patients diagnosed with severe community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (sCABP)—representing nearly a quarter of all CAPB admissions—to compare two major clinical definitions: ICU-sCABP (51.2%... read more
The Promise and Pitfalls of Bedside Muscle Ultrasound in the ICU
Evaluating muscle wasting and intensive care unit-acquired weakness (ICUAW) is critical, yet traditional methods fall short: computed tomography (CT) scans require risky patient transport, and standard physical exams require... read more
Bridging the Extracorporeal Divide: The 36th ADQI Roadmap for AKI and ECMO Care
The 36th Acute Disease Quality Initiative (ADQI) consensus meeting brought together critical care nephrology and ECMO experts to tackle the management of acute kidney injury (AKI), fluid balance (FB), and continuous renal... read more
Out of Bed and Breathing Better: Armchair vs. Bed Positioning for Critically Ill Patients
Moving critically ill patients out of bed into an armchair is a common ICU practice, but its direct impact on oxygenation has lacked strong clinical evidence. This single-center randomized controlled trial evaluated 284 spontaneously... read more
The POCUS Textbook: Learn Point-of-Care Ultrasound of the Blood Vessels, Heart, & Lungs
Bring your physical exam into the modern era by learning point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS). Learn cardiopulmonary POCUS with step-by-step instructions from Dr. Istrail. Over 100 crystal-clear figures beautifully designed... read more
Precision at Scale: Automating the SOFA Score for Smarter ICU Care
The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score is a vital tool for diagnosing sepsis and predicting patient outcomes in the ICU, but its manual calculation is often plagued by human error and scalability issues. To... read more