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The majority of deaths on the intensive care unit now occur following a decision to limit life-sustaining therapy, and end-of-life decision making is an accepted and important part of modern intensive care med...
Acute pancreatitis is a local inflammatory process that leads to a systemic inflammatory response in the majority of cases. Bacterial contamination has been estimated to occur in 30–40% of patients with necrot...
The Erratum to this article has been published in Critical Care 2005 9:286
The past 25 years have witnessed the development of improved tools with which to predict short-term and long-term outcomes after critical illness. The general paradigm for constructing the best known tools has...
Several papers are discussed including the CARP (Coronary Artery Revascularisation Prophylaxis) trial, examining the role, if any, of preoperative coronary revascularisation and a study examining the heart rat...
The initial distribution volume of glucose (IDVG) can be calculated from the arterial plasma glucose level between 3 and 7 min after a bolus intravenous infusion of 5 g glucose. Ishihara and colleagues have in...
Monitoring tissue hypoxia in critically ill patients is a challenging task. Tissue PCO2 has long been proposed as a marker of tissue hypoxia, although there is considerable controversy on whether the rise in CO2 ...
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an archetypal autoimmune disease, involving multiple organ systems with varying course and prognosis. However, there is a paucity of clinical data regarding prognostic fac...
Anemia is a common problem in critically ill patients. The etiology of anemia of critical illness is often determined to be multifactorial in the clinical setting, but the pathophysiology remains to be elucida...
Public training in the use of automated external defibrillators to treat out-of-hospital cardiac arrests has been receiving increased attention. The implementation of public access defibrillation programs has ...
Results from a French multicentre survey on the use of inotropes after cardiac surgery are presented. Consideration of these findings, which strictly apply only to France, highlights the importance of developi...
Impaired health-related quality of life after critical illness has been demonstrated in a number of studies. It is not clear exactly how or why critical illness and intensive care lead to impaired health statu...
The aim of this study was to assess the volume of gas being poorly ventilated or non-ventilated within the lungs of patients treated with mechanical ventilation and suffering from acute respiratory distress sy...
Septic shock is associated with increased microvascular permeability. As a model for study of the pathophysiology of sepsis, endotoxin administration to humans has facilitated research into inflammation, coagu...
Determine the effectiveness of decontamination, and perform thorough dry or wet decontamination, depending on the circumstances. Always remain cognizant of the fact that, even after decontamination has been co...
Neural networks are new methodological tools based on nonlinear models. They appear to be better at prediction and classification in biological systems than do traditional strategies such as logistic regressio...
In the absence of a direct method with which to measure pulmonary capillary pressure in humans, various methods for analyzing the pulmonary artery pressure decay following balloon occlusion have been described...
We previously reported that initial distribution volume of glucose (IDVG) reflects central extracellular fluid volume, and that IDVG may represent an indirect measure of cardiac preload that is independent of ...
Pulmonary capillary pressure (PCP), together with the time constants of the various vascular compartments, define the dynamics of the pulmonary vascular system. Our objective in the present study was to estima...
Both experimental and clinical studies have demonstrated that room air is as efficient as 100% oxygen for newborn resuscitation and improves short-term recovery. The recent meta-analysis by Davis and colleague...
The definition of risk in surgical patients is a complex and controversial area. Generally risk is poorly understood and depends on past individual and professional perception, and societal norms. In medical u...
Rhabdomyolysis is a pathogenetic cause of acute kidney injury. In such circumstances, not only should therapeutic strategies to replace the failing kidney be implemented, but measures should also be explored t...
In critically ill patients sudden changes in glomerular filtration rate (GFR) are not instantly followed by parallel changes in serum creatinine. The aim of the present study was to analyze the utility of seru...
The original article was published in Critical Care 2004 9:R37
There is evidence that use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) by laypersons improves rates of survival from cardiac arrest, but there is no consensus on the optimal content and duration of training fo...
We wished to obtain the experiences felt by patients during their ICU stay using an original questionnaire and to correlate the memories of those experiences with health-related quality of life (HR-QOL).
The use of a nursing-directed and/or respiratory therapist-directed protocol in many intensive care units for weaning from mechanical ventilation is associated with a shorter duration of ventilation and length...
Disaster medical response has historically focused on the pre-hospital and initial treatment needs of casualties. In particular, the critical care component of many disaster response plans is incomplete. Equal...
Imbalance in autonomic cardiovascular function increases the risk for sudden death in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), but the time course of the impact of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) on...
Sedation and analgesia are provided by using different agents and techniques in different countries. The goal is to achieve early spontaneous breathing and to obtain an awake and cooperative pain-free patient....
To test the ability of a novel super high-flux (SHF) membrane with a larger pore size to clear myoglobin from serum.
Acute lung injury or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ALI/ARDS) in the course of sepsis is thought to result from increased pulmonary capillary permeability and resultant edema. However, when the edema is ...
The aim of the study was to determine whether the use of a nurses' protocol-directed weaning procedure, based on the French intensive care society (SRLF) consensus recommendations, was associated with reductio...
Disaster management plans have traditionally been required to manage major traumatic events that create a large number of victims. Infectious diseases, whether they be natural (e.g. SARS [severe acute respirat...
This review introduces logistic regression, which is a method for modelling the dependence of a binary response variable on one or more explanatory variables. Continuous and categorical explanatory variables a...
'Every day' clinical conundrums are all too infrequently addressed in the mainstream literature, but in the past few months two reports attempted to tackle the thorny problem of the occult cervical spine injur...
This commentary represents a selective survey of developments relevant to critical care. Selected themes include advances in point-of-care diagnostic testing, glucose control, novel microbiological diagnostics...
Few investigations have prospectively examined extravascular lung water (EVLW) in patients with severe sepsis. We sought to determine whether EVLW may contribute to lung injury in these patients by quantifying...
Increased intramucosal–arterial carbon dioxide tension (PCO2) difference (ΔPCO2) is common in experimental endotoxemia. However, its meaning remains controversial because it has been ascribed to hypoperfusion of ...
The management challenges of patients with nosocomial pneumonia are great because of resistance among the responsible pathogens. In this issue of Critical Care, Argyris Michalopoulos and colleagues describe the u...
Research involving critically ill persons highlights challenging questions surrounding third party authorization. The ethical and legal viability in research involving persons who do not have the capacity to c...
Critical Care