Stories Category: Intensive Care
Addressing Shortcomings in Infection and Sepsis Treatment Should Be Top of the Priority List
Hospitals are increasingly facing the challenge of cutting costs while also improving clinical outcomes. This is certainly true in the infectious disease sector, as unrecognized or ineffectively treated bacterial infections... read more
Is Pre-hospital Coagulation Management in Trauma Feasible?
Coagulation management remains a formidable challenge in severely bleeding trauma patients. A strong rationale suggests starting treatment of trauma-induced coagulopathy in the pre-hospital phase. The burden of trauma is... read more
Describing Organ Dysfunction in the ICU
Multiple organ dysfunction is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in intensive care units (ICUs). Original development of the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score was not to predict outcome, but to describe... read more
Handbook on the Neuropsychology of Traumatic Brain Injury
This book collects and synthesizes the latest thinking on the condition in its variety of cognitive and behavioral presentations, matched by a variety of clinical responses. Acknowledging the continuum of injury and the multi-stage... read more
Regeneration of Severely Damaged Lungs Using an Interventional Cross-circulation Platform
The number of available donor organs limits lung transplantation, the only lifesaving therapy for the increasing population of patients with end-stage lung disease. A prevalent etiology of injury that renders lungs unacceptable... read more
Closed ICU Model Linked to 100% Reduction in Several HAIs
A closed intensive care unit model, in which a patient is evaluated and admitted under an intensivist and patient care orders are written by ICU staff, can help reduce rates of several healthcare-associated infections (HAI),... read more
Diagnostic error increases mortality and length of hospital stay in patients presenting through the emergency room
Diagnostic errors occur frequently, especially in the emergency room. Estimates about the consequences of diagnostic error vary widely and little is known about the factors predicting error. Our objectives thus was to determine... read more
Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU
Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average... read more
Mechanical Ventilation Enhances Extrapulmonary Sepsis-induced Lung Injury
These data show for the first time that otherwise noninjurious mechanical ventilation can exacerbate acute lung injury (ALI) due to extrapulmonary sepsis underscoring a potential interactive contribution of common events... read more
Characteristics, Management, and In-hospital Mortality Among Patients with Severe Sepsis in ICU in Japan
Sepsis is a leading cause of death and long-term disability in developed countries. A comprehensive report on the incidence, clinical characteristics, and evolving management of sepsis is important. Thus, this study aimed... read more
Prediction of ICU Delirium
The predictive models evaluated in this study demonstrated moderate to good discriminative ability to predict ICU patients' risk of developing delirium. Models calculated at 24-hours post-ICU admission appear to be more accurate... read more
Early Sepsis Screening in the Emergency Department
This single-center retrospective analysis shows promising results with NEWS as a screening tool primarily because it can be done at triage and does not require any laboratory evaluation. This study adds to the current knowledge... read more
How can we make ICU rehabilitation easier for patients and relatives?
Zoe van Willigen is a Physiotherapist in Critical Care at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. Her study aims to explore patients' and relatives' experiences of ICU rehabilitation (being mobilised out of... read more
Relationship of at Admission Lactate, Unmeasured Anions, and Chloride to the Outcome of Critically Ill Patients
Four thousand nine hundred one patients were admitted throughout the study period; 1,609 met criteria for metabolic acidosis and 145 had normal acid-base values. The association between at admission lactate, unmeasured anions,... read more