Critical Care Alert – June 1, 2019
June 1, 2019
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Management Guidelines for Acute Pancreatitis
There are more than 275,000 hospitalizations for acute pancreatitis per year, with more than $2.6 billion spent on care worldwide. Many of these cases require ICU admission. Mortality rates vary between 2% and 17% depending on illness severity. Despite this burden of illness, questions remain regarding the most basic elements of care.
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Maintaining Oxygenation Without Increasing Aspiration Risk During Induction
In this multicenter, randomized, unblinded trial, bag-mask ventilation from time of induction to laryngoscopy was associated with higher oxygen saturations and lower incidence of severe hypoxemia compared to those not “bagged.”
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Physicians Cannot Agree on Who Benefits From ICU Care
The authors of a study randomizing U.S. critical care physicians to analyze hypothetical patient vignettes found that estimates of whether a patient would benefit from ICU care were widely dissimilar among those surveyed and influenced by factors unrelated to severity of illness.