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n their 1985 article The Chronically Critically Ill: To Save or Let Die?, Girard and Raffin created the term chronically critically ill to describe patients admitted to an ICU who survived their acute insults but remained dependent on intensive care therapies.
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Beta-blockers and noncardiac surgery; prenatal medication exposure and risk of autism; reasons for statin discontinuations; and FDA actions.
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The quality of care provided to patients and their families at end-of-life has become a key element in discussions on U.S. health care system reform.
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Deep sedation during the early period of mechanical ventilatory support delays extubation and increases mortality, yet is a modifiable risk factor that requires innovative intervention to reduce these adverse outcomes.
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Using a national database, the authors found that morbidly obese patients undergoing invasive mechanical ventilation had a similar risk of in-hospital mortality compared to non-obese individuals, despite having higher rates of invasive mechanical ventilation and tracheostomy.
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Nationwide from 2000-2009, there was a steady increase in the use of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in managing acute respiratory failure, although the percentage of potentially eligible patients who receive it remains small. Importantly, the proportional increase was less for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ([COPD] in which the evidence is compelling and NIV is the standard of care) than for non-COPD causes of respiratory failure (in which the evidence is weaker or conflicting).
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Despite better compliance with hand hygiene and screening, use of isolation, and other techniques, ICUs remain notorious breeding grounds for hospital-acquired infections. A universal decolonization strategy reduces the total number of ICU bloodborne infections.
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Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a stroke syndrome, defined as rapidly developing neurological dysfunction and/or headache because of bleeding into the subarachnoid space (the space between the subarachnoid membrane and the pia mater of the brain or spinal cord), which is not caused by trauma.1 It is a dire condition with high morbidity and mortality.
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NSAIDs and cardiovascular risk; new antithrombotic guidelines; warfarin during surgery; Pfizer selling Viagra online; azithromycin and cardiovascular risk; and FDA actions.