Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Aug 1996
Hypocholesterolemia and risk of death in the critically ill surgical patient.
To evaluate the additional information provided by the determination of cholesterolemia to the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score. ⋯ Both hyper- and hypocholesterolemia have a highly significant relationship to mortality. Cholesterolemia improves the prognostic power of the APACHE II score. This result could be used to create a more powerful prognostic index.
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Intensive care medicine · Aug 1996
Analysis of P50 and oxygen transport in patients after cardiac surgery.
To determine whether standard P50 after cardiac surgery decreases and whether decreased P50 is related to the transfusion of red blood cells (RBCs), acid-base changes, body temperature, oxygen parameters and/or duration of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). ⋯ Cardiac surgery patients receiving more RBC units have lower standard P50 and consume more oxygen. P50 decreased more when the CPB took longer. Because a decrease in P50 implies a low ratio of mixed venous oxygen tension (PvO2) to SvO2, a shift in P50 should be taken into account when using SvO2 as a measure of global oxygen availability. When a direct measurement of SvO2 is not available, PvO2 should be used instead of calculated SvO2.
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Intensive care medicine · Aug 1996
Haemodynamic and respiratory conditions during alternating and synchronous ventilation of both lungs.
We tested the hypothesis that mean thoracic expansion (and mean lung volume) is lower during alternating ventilation (AV), i.e. ventilation of both lungs with a phase shift of half a ventilatory cycle, compared to synchronous ventilation (SV) of both lungs. As a consequence, intrathoracic pressure will be lower, causing lower, central venous pressure and higher cardiac output. ⋯ Our data verified the hypothesis. The lower oesophageal (series 1), pericardial (series 2) and central venous pressures during AV compared to SV could be explained by the smaller thoracic expansion due to the lower mean lung volume, which was attributed to compression of the opposite lung by the, expansion of the inflated lung.