Search Tag: ICU
Jean-Louis Vincent
2017 16 Feb
Editor-in-Chief, ICU Management & Practice Professor of Intensive Care Medicine, University of Brussels Our health is our most precious good and helping people whose health is damaged or at stake is the highest privilege on earth Management Tip: Make everybody happy… and make sure they... Read more
New Strategy for Identifying Sepsis Arising in the ICU
2017 14 Feb
A new methodology using administrative codes coupled to a SIRS screening protocol can help identify patients whose sepsis initially appears during their ICU stay, with up to 94 percent accuracy, according to a new study published in Journal of Critical Care. See Also : Surviving Sepsis Guidelines 2016 Update "We found that we could reliably... Read more
What is the Optimal Patient-Intensivist Ratio?
2017 24 Jan
A retrospective cohort study of 49,686 adults admitted to 94 ICUs in the UK between 2010 and 2013 found that a patient-intensivist ratio less than or greater than 7.5 was associated with higher hospital and ICU mortality. The study, by Hayley Gershengorn, MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and colleagues was the first multicentre study to assess... Read more
Divergent Views on Withdrawing Futile Intensive Care
2017 24 Jan
Physicians and the general public have significantly different views when it comes to deciding whether to withhold or withdraw treatment of terminally ill patients. However, a new study at Umeå University in Sweden suggests that the two groups tended to agree with regard to cancelling treatment or offering relief at the final stages of life. See Also:... Read more
CICU: Cardiac Intensivist-directed Care Linked to Lower Mortality
2016 20 Dec
In the CICU setting, the presence of a dedicated cardiac intensivist has been shown to reduce mortality rates in patients with cardiovascular disease who require critical care. The findings are from a study by South Korean researchers and published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology. See Also : Challenges of Critical Care Cardiology... Read more
Quality Management: The Role of Intensive Care Registries
2016 30 Nov
To initiate, maintain and advance a quality improvement programme in your intensive care unit consumes large amounts of time and energy. There are many advantages for quality management in joining an intensive care registry; the most important is access to precisely defined data for comparative audit. Intensive Care Registries Joint... Read more
Difficult Intubation in the ICU: Why and How to Prevent and Manage Difficult Intubation?
2016 30 Nov
Severe hypoxaemia and cardiovascular collapse, leading to cardiac arrest, cerebral anoxia and death, are the most frequent complications related to intubation in intensive care units (ICU), associated with difficulty of intubation. To prevent and limit the incidence of difficult intubation, specific risk factors for difficult intubation in the ICU... Read more
Pain Assessment and Management for Intensive Care Unit Patients: Seeking Best Practices
2016 30 Nov
This review article focuses on research-based advances in pain assessment practices in intensive care units (ICUs), and stresses clinician consideration of multimodal analgesic techniques for pain management in ICUs. Over the past 30 years, attention devoted to pain experienced by intensive care unit (ICU) patients has evolved from recognising... Read more
What Can Psychologists Do in Intensive Care?
2016 30 Nov
As awareness has grown of the great distress intensive care patients may suffer, units have begun recruiting psychologists to their teams. Intensive care unit psychologists aim to assess and reduce distress for patients, families and staff, to improve outcomes. This paper summarises research on the psychological impact of critical illness, highlights... Read more
Clinical Pharmacist Role in the ICU
2016 30 Nov
We provide an overview of the various facets of pharmacist practice in the intensive care unit (ICU), the current extent to which pharmacists are present in the ICU, along with a discussion on barriers and lessons learned in garnering support for such a role. Caring for critically ill patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) is considered... Read more