Effects of Baseline Thrombocytopenia and Platelet Decrease Following RRT Initiation in Patients With Severe AKI

Baseline thrombocytopenia and platelet decrease following renal replacement therapy initiation were associated with increased mortality, and baseline thrombocytopenia was associated with decreased rates of renal recovery.... read more

An Innovative Virtual Reality Experience in the PICU

Virtual reality is an innovative, easily administered, and enjoyable tool that subjectively calms PICU patients in an otherwise chaotic environment. 100% of participants enjoyed using virtual reality, and 84% reported preference... read more

Who May Benefit Most From Future Vitamin D Intervention Trials

High-dose vitamin D3 supplementation was associated with a reduction of 28-day mortality in a mixed population of critically ill adults with vitamin D deficiency when excluding patients who died or were discharged within... read more

Validation and Critical Evaluation of the Effective Arterial Elastance in Critically Ill Patients

In critically ill patients, effective arterial elastance may be reliably estimated at bedside. We support the use of this validated estimate of effective arterial elastance when coupled with an index of left ventricular contractility... read more

Huddling for High Reliability and Situation Awareness

This study objectives were to explore hospital administrator and frontline staff perspectives on the benefits and challenges of implementing a tiered huddle system; and propose a model based on our findings depicting the... read more

What influences critical care doctors in withdrawing life support for patients with brain injury?

Decisions to withdraw life support treatments in critically ill patients with severe brain injury are complicated, are based on many factors, and are usually made by critical care physicians and families in the intensive... read more

Post-discharge Impact of Healthcare-associated Infections in a Developing Country

The impact of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) on in-hospital mortality, morbidity, length-of-stay, and costs has been extensively reported. However, few studies have focused on the follow-up of HCAI-affected subjects... read more

Using Propensity Scoring Analyses in Critical Care Research

Observational studies are a common and important aspect of critical care research. A key challenge in the design of observational studies is the control of confounding. Confounding arises when the groups being compared in... read more

Impact of Weekly Case-based Tele-education on Quality of Care in a Limited Resource Medical ICU

Limited critical care subspecialty training and experience is available in many low- and middle-income countries, creating barriers to the delivery of evidence-based critical care. We hypothesized that a structured tele-education... read more

Midazolam Dose Optimization in Critically Ill Pediatric Patients with ARF

This work leveraged available knowledge on non-heritable and heritable factors affecting midazolam pharmacokinetic in pediatric subjects with primary respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation, providing the basis... read more

Evaluation of a Safer Opioid Prescribing Protocol (SOPP) for Patients Being Discharged From a Trauma Service

The aims of this study were to evaluate the effects on opioid medication prescribing, patient opioid safety education, and prescribing of naloxone following implementation of a Safer Opioid Prescribing Protocol (SOPP) as... read more

Association of Age With Short-term and Long-term Mortality Among Patients Discharged From ICUs in France

Results of this study suggest that aging was associated with an increased risk of mortality in the 3 years after hospital discharge that included an ICU admission, with a sharp increase in those 80 years and older. However,... read more

Level and Prevalence of Spin in Published Cardiovascular Randomized Clinical Trial Reports With Statistically Nonsignificant Primary Outcomes

In this systematic review that included 93 reports of Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) from 6 high-impact journals, positive spin of statistically nonsignificant primary outcomes was found in 57% of abstracts and 67% of... read more

Clinician Perception of a Machine Learning–Based Early Warning System Designed to Predict Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock

In general, clinical perceptions of Early Warning System 2.0 were poor. Nurses and providers differed in their perceptions of sepsis and alert benefits. These findings highlight the challenges of achieving acceptance of predictive... read more

Pretreating red blood cells with nitric oxide may reduce side effect linked to transfusions

A new treatment may diminish a dangerous side effect associated with transfusions of red blood cells (RBCs) known as pulmonary hypertension, an elevated blood pressure in the lungs and heart that can lead to heart failure.... read more

Closed Chest Compressions in Traumatic Cardiac Arrest

This study demonstrated that fluid resuscitation with whole blood is significantly better than resuscitation with compressions alone or with normal saline. It further showed that there was no difference between whole blood... read more

Reproducibility Trial Publishes Two Conclusions For One Paper

The British Journal of Anaesthesia's unusual experiment is designed to broaden replicability efforts beyond just methods and results. How deeply an anaesthetist should sedate an elderly person when they have surgery is... read more

The Epidemiology of Symptomatic Catheter-associated Urinary Tract Infections in the ICU

Catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) occurs frequently in critical illness with significant morbidity, mortality, and additional hospital costs. The epidemiology of symptomatic ward-acquired CAUTI (within 48... read more

Disease History to Predict Mortality Risk in ICU Patients

Patients in the intensive care unit are highly heterogeneous, and include elderly patients who generally have a long history of disease. Prediction of prognosis can often be difficult because of the severity of patient illness... read more

Environment key battle ground in fight to tackle antibiotic resistance

The environment could be as important a battle ground as the clinic in the global fight against the spread of antibiotic resistance, new research has shown. A study conducted at the University of Exeter Medical School concluded... read more

Organizational Factors Associated with Target Sedation on the First 48 hours of Mechanical Ventilation

Although light sedation levels are associated with several beneficial outcomes for critically ill patients on mechanical ventilation, the majority of patients are still deeply sedated. Organizational factors may play a role... read more

Fluid Responsiveness in Sepsis

Fluid challenge is a common practice in the ICU. It is one of the most important resuscitation manoeuvres of acute circulatory failure management in critically ill patients. Adequate fluid resuscitation is very important... read more