Intensive care medicine
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The integration of palliative care into intensive care units (ICUs) is advocated to mitigate physical and psychological burdens for patients and their families, and to improve end-of-life care. The most efficacious palliative care interventions, the optimal model of their delivery and the most appropriate outcome measures in ICU are not clear. ⋯ Beneficial effects on the most common outcomes were associated with strategies to enhance palliative care involvement, either with an integrative or a consultative approach. Few studies reported functional outcomes for ICU patients. Almost all studies were from North America, limiting the generalisability to other healthcare systems.
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Intensive care medicine · Dec 2021
Aerobic exercise capacity in long-term survivors of critical illness: secondary analysis of the post-EPaNIC follow-up study.
To evaluate aerobic exercise capacity in 5-year intensive care unit (ICU) survivors and to assess the association between severity of organ failure in ICU and exercise capacity up to 5-year follow-up. ⋯ Critical illness survivors often display abnormal aerobic exercise capacity, frequently involving muscular limitation. Severity of organ failure throughout the ICU stay independently associates with these impairments.
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Intensive care medicine · Dec 2021
Observational StudyThe association of the COVID-19 pandemic and short-term outcomes of non-COVID-19 critically ill patients: an observational cohort study in Brazilian ICUs.
To assess whether intensive care unit (ICU) outcomes for patients not affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⋯ Hospital outcomes of non-COVID-19 critically ill patients worsened during the pandemic in 2020, possibly resulting in an increased number of deaths in critically ill non-COVID patients.