Journal of critical care
-
Journal of critical care · Dec 2013
Severe hyperkalemia can be detected immediately by quantitative electrocardiography and clinical history in patients with symptomatic or extreme bradycardia: A retrospective cross-sectional study.
Detecting severe hyperkalemia is challenging. We explored its prevalence in symptomatic or extreme bradycardia and devised a diagnostic rule. ⋯ Severe hyperkalemia is prevalent in symptomatic or extreme bradycardia and detectable by quantitative electrocardiographic parameters and history.
-
Journal of critical care · Dec 2013
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyDexmedetomidine preserves attention/calculation when used for cooperative and short-term intensive care unit sedation.
Differential effects on cognition were recently demonstrated between dexmedetomidine (DEX) and propofol (PRO) when used for cooperative sedation. Propofol was found to reduce cognition, whereas DEX improved cognition. To further discriminate these effects, we evaluated the effect of PRO vs DEX in selected areas of cognition. ⋯ Our findings indicate that DEX improved ACE attention/calculation subscale in awake patients receiving cooperative sedation. This is in contrast to the deterioration in all mean ACE subscale scores observed using PRO, suggesting DEX preserved cognitive function with specific preservation of focus and attention and allows for greater cognition compared with PRO across all cognitive domains.