Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers
Transfusable fluids that may be used as alternatives to red blood cell transfusion offer the promise of preserving tissue perfusion and minimizing hypoxic cellular damage, and this promise may soon be fulfille...
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Transfusable fluids that may be used as alternatives to red blood cell transfusion offer the promise of preserving tissue perfusion and minimizing hypoxic cellular damage, and this promise may soon be fulfille...
Although preoperative autologous blood donation is employed in elective surgery, this is declining because of the increasingly safe allogeneic blood supply. However, it continues to be used because of the publ...
Derangements of iron metabolism may be present in critically ill patients who develop anemia during a stay in the intensive care unit. Iron supplementation may be appropriate, especially if an underlying nutri...
Anemia is a common problem in critically ill patients. It is caused, in part, by blood loss related to phlebotomy for diagnostic testing, occult gastrointestinal bleeding, renal replacement therapies, surgical...
Tracheotomy is widely performed in the intensive care unit after long-term oral intubation. The present study investigates the immediate influence of tracheotomy on respiratory mechanics and blood gases during...
Both C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) are accepted sepsis markers. However, there is still some debate concerning the correlation between their serum concentrations and sepsis severity. We hypo...
The high morbidity and mortality of severe sepsis and septic shock fosters a continuous search for novel therapies that go beyond pure correction of oxygenation and hemodynamics. Within this scope, N-acetylcystei...
Large quantitaties of inflammatory mediators are released during the course of endotoxaemia. These mediators in turn can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) to release catecholamines, which ultimate...
The current literature on venous access in infants and children for acute intravascular access in the routine situation and in emergency or intensive care settings is reviewed. The various techniques for facil...
Acute lung injury and its more severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome, are major challenges in critically ill patients. Activation of circulating neutrophils and transmigration into the alveolar airs...
Microdialysis is a technique used to measure the concentrations of various compounds in the extracellular fluid of an organ or in a body fluid. It is a form of metabolic monitoring that provides real-time, con...
Anaemia is a common problem in critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units. Many factors can be involved in its development, including rapid alterations of iron metabolism. Maintenance of iron hom...
The importance of accidental catheter removal (ACR) lies in the complications caused by the removal itself and by catheter reinsertion. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have analyzed accidental removal...
We conducted the present study to investigate whether early large-volume crystalloid infusion can restore gut mucosal blood flow and mesenteric oxygen metabolism in severe sepsis.
It is recognized that administration of insulin with glucose decreases catabolic response in sepsis. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of two levels of insulinaemia on glucose metabolism ...
This review describes current knowledge on the mechanisms that underlie glucocorticoid insufficiency in sepsis and the molecular action of glucocorticoids. In patients with severe sepsis, numerous factors pred...
Acute lung injury (ALI) and the acute respiratory distress syndrome are complex syndromes because both inflammatory and coagulation cascades cause lung injury. Transport of salt and water, repair and remodelin...
Rusavy and colleagues recently endeavoured to dissect out the metabolic effects of insulin in patients with severe sepsis, in the setting of normoglycaemia. Twenty stable patients were studied 3–7 days after a...
There is no consensus definition of acute renal failure (ARF) in critically ill patients. More than 30 different definitions have been used in the literature, creating much confusion and making comparisons dif...
The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of five general severity-of-illness scores (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II and III-J, the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, and the ...
The objective of the present article is to review moral assumptions underlying organ donation in the intensive care unit. Data sources used include personal experience, and a Medline search and a non-Medline s...
Two generic paediatric mortality scoring systems have been validated in the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Paediatric RISk of Mortality (PRISM) requires an observation period of 24 hours, and PRISM III...
Sepsis and severe sepsis are asociated with high hospital mortality. Little is known about the occurrence of sepsis in general hospital populations. The goal of the present study was to reveal the epidemiology...
The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of continuously infused N-acetyl-L-cystein (NAC) on serum cytokine levels and gastric intramucosal pH in humans suffering from severe sepsis.
The role played by several vasoactive mediators that are synthesized and released by the pulmonary vascular endothelium in the regulation of hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) remains unclear. As a poten...
Severe sepsis is a dreaded consequence of infection and necessitates intensive care treatment. Severe sepsis has a profound impact on mortality and on hospital costs, but recent incidence data from The Netherl...
Critically ill patients frequently develop anemia due to several factors. Iron-withholding mechanisms caused by inflammation contribute to this anemia. The iron metabolism imbalances described or reported in a...
Most clinical trials on the topic of extubation have involved patients outside the neurological intensive care unit. As a result, in this area clinicians are left with little evidence on which to base their de...
The importance of chest wall elastance in characterizing acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome patients and in setting mechanical ventilation is increasingly recognized. Nearly 30% of patients ...
Outside the intensive care unit (ICU), clinically important deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is usually defined as a symptomatic event that leads to objective radiologic confirmation and subsequent treatment. The ob...
The recognition and management of acid–base disorders is a commonplace activity for intensivists. Despite the frequency with which non-bicarbonate-losing forms of metabolic acidosis such as lactic acidosis occ...
The LiDCOâ„¢plus system is a minimally/non-invasive technique of continuous cardiac output measurement. In common with all cardiac output monitors this technology has both strengths and weaknesses. This review d...
The history of assessing the acid–base equilibrium and associated disorders is intertwined with the evolution of the definition of an acid. In the 1950s clinical chemists combined the Henderson–Hasselbalch equ...
Sepsis is a complex syndrome that develops when the initial, appropriate host response to an infection becomes amplified, and is then dysregulated. Among other factors, the innate immune system is of central i...
In a recent issue of the British Journal of Anaesthesia, Moloney and Griffiths reviewed clinically pertinent issues surrounding the management of the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patient, particular...
This review introduces nonparametric methods for testing differences between more than two groups or treatments. Three of the more common tests are described in detail, together with multiple comparison proced...
This review addresses the pathophysiology and treatment of hemorrhagic shock – a condition produced by rapid and significant loss of intravascular volume, which may lead sequentially to hemodynamic instability...
Postoperative outcome is mainly influenced by ventricular function. Tests designed to identify myocardial ischemia alone will fail to detect cardiac failure and are thus inadequate as a screening test for iden...
The pathogenicity of late respiratory infections with herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) in the critically ill is unclear.
Purple urine bag syndrome (PUBS) was first reported in 1978. PUBS is rare, occurs predominantly in constipated women, chronically catheterized and associated with some bacterial urinary infections that produce...
Vogelzang et al. retrospectively assessed a derivative marker of blood glucose control over time in the intensive care unit (ICU), "the hyperglycemic index" (HGI), in relation to outcome. The HGI predicted mortal...
Resuscitation with saline is a standard initial response to hypotension or shock of almost any cause. Saline resuscitation is thought to generate an increase in cardiac output through a preload-dependent (incr...