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When critical illness occurs, the primary goal is to assist patients to survive the acute threat to their lives. This goal is commonly achieved with 75%-90% of patients who are admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) surviving to discharge.
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The purpose of this study was to determine whether use of a simple, easy-to-view, color-coded device could increase adherence to head-of-bed (HOB) elevation guidelines. The device consisted of a piece of glossy printer paper cut into a triangle.
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This study reports on the results of a single-hospital study of a quality improvement intervention to improve palliative care in the ICU.
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Tracking the utilization of intensive care unit (ICU) resources is important in informing clinicians of patterns of use and costs of care, especially as the proportion of patients aged 65 and older increases and ICU resources remain limited.
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Although the original study by Van den Berghe et al sparked interest in the use of intensive insulin therapy in the ICU, subsequent studies have cast doubt on the efficacy and safety of this practice.
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Many physicians have followed the historical practice of ordering blood cultures to be drawn as close as possible to the time of the peak of the febrile episode (fever spike). In the absence of prescient knowledge of this moment, physicians order blood cultures to be drawn at intervals ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours. A paper by Jaimes et al suggested that many factors, other than fever, such as shaking chills, WBC counts, hypotension, and more were needed to better predict whether a patient was experiencing bacteremia.
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The incidence of legionellosis in the United States increased significantly in 2003-2005 compared to previous years. This was due mostly to an upsurge of cases in the northeastern and southern United States and a shift of disease from elderly to middle-aged adults. Legionellosis should be considered as a potential cause of pneumonia in a broad range of patients, rather than a small subset with specific risk factors.
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Intravenous thrombolysis is safe and effective for the treatment of ischemic stroke in the time window of 3-4.5 hours after the onset of symptoms.