Tag: ICU
Intraoperative Oxidative Stress Associated With Postoperative Delirium
Intraoperative oxidative stress is associated with postoperative delirium in ICU patients after cardiac surgery, a study has found. Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, Tenn., came to this... read more
Vitamin C and the Ethics of Borrowing data
I was recently amazed to be engaged in a Twitter kerfuffle which generated more than 10,000 Impressions within 24 hours. Passions were running high, libellous comments were being broadcast, and old friendships seemed to be... read more
Quantifying the Mortality Impact of Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders in the ICU
Do-not-resuscitate status is an independent risk factor for ICU mortality. This may reflect severity of illness not captured by other clinical factors, but the perceptions of the treating team related to do-not-resuscitate... read more
Perceptions of the Appropriateness of Care in California Adult ICUs
Increased demand for expensive intensive care unit (ICU) services may contribute to rising health-care costs. A focus on appropriate use may offer a clinically meaningful way of finding the balance. Thirty-eight percent of... read more
Clinical review: The ABC of weaning failure
About 20% to 30% of patients are difficult to wean from invasive mechanical ventilation. The pathophysiology of difficult weaning is complex. Accordingly, determining the reason for difficult weaning and subsequently developing... read more
Milestones in Critical Care
Take a look back at some of Critical Care's milestones over the past 20 years. In the past 20 years, the journal has contributed to improving the care of critically ill patients by acquiring, discussing, distributing... read more
The Current State of Glycaemic Control Practice
Study involving intensivists from 90 ICUs in northwest Europe confirms significant variability in glycaemic control practices. The study confirmed that there are still controversies over what constitutes optimal glucose management... read more
Priority Levels in Intensive Care at an Academic Public Hospital
This prospective study of medical records determined the proportion of medical ICU patients in each priority group within a tertiary care academic public hospital. Critical care services can be life-saving, but many patients... read more
The ICM research agenda on ICU-acquired weakness
Intensive care unit (ICU)-acquired weakness (ICUAW) develops as a complication of critical illness and may represent the extreme end of a spectrum of weakness that begins with any serious illness regardless of care location.... read more
Preadmission Oral Corticosteroids Are Associated With Reduced Risk of ARDS in Critically Ill Adults With Sepsis
The unadjusted occurrence rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome within 96 hours of ICU admission was 35% among patients who had received oral corticosteroids compared with 42% among those who had not (p = 0.107). In... read more
Decision Making Model Enables Resolution of Ethics Issues at the Bedside
A study from Switzerland that evaluated implementation of a stepped ethical decision-making model on three intensive care units (ICUs) and two geriatric wards found that it worked well, with staff able to find the time and... read more
Being New in the ICU
Being new in the ICU is not easy. You need to have the passion for critical care so much that you really don’t care how difficult it is. That passion is what gets you through the newbie stress. I was a new grad in the ICU,... read more
An Educational Intervention Optimizes the Use of Arterial Blood Gas Determinations Across ICUs
The large scale implementation of guidelines for ABG use reduced the number of inappropriately ordered ABG determinations over seven different multidisciplinary ICUs, without negatively impacting patient care. We saw a reduction... read more
Barriers to Regaining Control within a Constructivist Grounded Theory of Family Resilience in ICU
This paper discusses families' experiences of their interactions when a relative is admitted unexpectedly to an Australian ICU. A grounded theory methodology was adopted for the study. Data was collected between 2009−2013,... read more
Medical Device Interoperability 4.0: Disruptive Innovation for the ICU
Medical Device Interoperability in the ICU did not undergo any significant innovation in the past 30 years. This is the reason why data integration of medical device data into Electronic Medical Records (EMR/EHR) and Population... read more
National ICU Quality Indicators Revisited
The use of QI at a national level is a suitable method to focus on quality in healthcare. Independently of public access to the results, a local or national ICU network will have a lot to gain from engaging in the process... read more
Toward the Ideal Ratio of Patients to Intensivists
More than 5.7 million patients are admitted annually to an intensive care unit (ICU) in the United States, accounting for approximately 20% of all acute care admissions. With the aging population and its increasing comorbidity... read more
Ultrasound Guidance and Other Determinants of Successful Peripheral Artery Catheterization
Margaret Parker, MD, MCCM, speaks with David B. Kantor, MD, PhD, about the article, "Ultrasound Guidance and Other Determinants of Successful Peripheral Artery Catheterization in Critically Ill Children," published in the... read more
In Hospital ICUs, AI Could Predict Which Patients Are Likely to Die
With streams of data coming from equipment that monitors patients’ vital signs, the ICU seems the perfect setting to deploy artificially intelligent tools that could judge when a patient is likely to take a turn for the... read more
Arterial Blood Gas: Time and Motion Study
Nursing workload using the Proxima versus standard arterial blood gas sampling Arterial Blood Gas (ABG) sampling is carried out in intensive care units (ICU) every day. Traditionally the nurse takes the blood sample and... read more
Factors influencing physical activity and rehabilitation in survivors of critical illness
Eighty-nine papers were included. Five major themes and 28 sub-themes were identified, encompassing: (1) patient physical and psychological capability to perform physical activity, including delirium, sedation, illness severity,... read more
The status of intensive care medicine research and a future agenda for very old patients in the ICU
The "very old intensive care patients" (abbreviated to VOPs; greater than 80 years old) are probably the fastest expanding subgroup of all intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Up until recently most ICU physicians... read more
