Journal of critical care
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2013
Six-day postoperative impact of a standardized nurse observation and escalation protocol: A preintervention and postintervention study.
The purpose of the study is to determine the impact of a standardized nurse observation and escalation protocol on observation frequency, the measurement of vital signs, and the incidence of in-hospital mortality and resurgery. ⋯ The mean patient observation frequency per nursing shift increased from 0.9076 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8921-0.9231) preintervention to 0.9940 (95% CI, 0.9708-1.0172; P < .001) postintervention and was lower in case of 6-day postoperative mortality (0.6686 [95% CI, 0.4984-0.8388] vs other patients 0.9475 [95% CI, 0.9340-0.9610]; P = .003) or resurgery (0.8402 [95% CI, 0.7894-0.8909] vs other patients 0.9564 [95% CI, 0.9378-0.9657]; P = .003). The mean number of vital signs measured per observation episode increased from a mean of 1.81 (95% CI, 1.79-1.83) preintervention to 2.45 (95% CI, 2.39-2.51; P < .001) postintervention. The relative risk reduction was 73.7% (95% CI, 22.8-91.0; P = .015) for 6-day postoperative in-hospital mortality and 30.9% (95% CI, 9.5-47.2; P = .007) for 6-day postoperative resurgery.
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Journal of critical care · Dec 2013
Assessment of right ventricular functions in patients with sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock and its prognostic importance: A tissue Doppler study.
This study aims to investigate the potential contributions of the right ventricle (RV) performance evaluated using tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) on the assessment of the severity and prognosis of sepsis. ⋯ Our study shows that the RV dysfunction evaluated using TDI, particularly the RV-Sm and MPI values, were related with the severity of sepsis and mortality.