Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2021
Admission Features Associated With Paroxysmal Sympathetic Hyperactivity After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Case-Control Study.
Paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity occurs in a subset of critically ill traumatic brain injury patients and has been associated with worse outcomes after traumatic brain injury. The goal of this study was to identify admission risk factors for the development of paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity in traumatic brain injury patients. ⋯ Several anatomical, epidemiologic, and physiologic risk factors for clinically relevant paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity can be identified on ICU admission. These features help characterize paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity as a clinical-pathophysiologic phenotype associated with worse outcomes after traumatic brain injury.
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2021
Discriminating Bacterial and Viral Infection Using a Rapid Host Gene Expression Test.
Host gene expression signatures discriminate bacterial and viral infection but have not been translated to a clinical test platform. This study enrolled an independent cohort of patients to describe and validate a first-in-class host response bacterial/viral test. ⋯ The host response bacterial/viral measured using the BioFire System rapidly and accurately discriminated bacterial and viral infection better than procalcitonin, which can help support more appropriate antibiotic use.
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2021
Predictive Performance of Bayesian Vancomycin Monitoring in the Critically Ill.
It is recommended that therapeutic monitoring of vancomycin should be guided by 24-hour area under the curve concentration. This can be done via Bayesian models in dose-optimization software. However, before these models can be incorporated into clinical practice in the critically ill, their predictive performance needs to be evaluated. This study assesses the predictive performance of Bayesian models for vancomycin in the critically ill. ⋯ Bayesian models of vancomycin show not only low bias, but also low precision in the critically ill. Thus, Bayesian-guided dosing of vancomycin in this population should be used cautiously.
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2021
Validation of a Crisis Standards of Care Model for Prioritization of Limited Resources During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Crisis in an Urban, Safety-Net, Academic Medical Center.
The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has overwhelmed healthcare resources even in wealthy nations, necessitating rationing of limited resources without previously established crisis standards of care protocols. In Massachusetts, triage guidelines were designed based on acute illness and chronic life-limiting conditions. In this study, we sought to retrospectively validate this protocol to cohorts of critically ill patients from our hospital. ⋯ Patients with major and severe chronic medical conditions overall had 46.55% and 50.00% mortality at 1 and 5 years, respectively. However, mortality varied between conditions. Our findings appear to support a crisis standards protocol which focuses on acute illness severity and only considers underlying conditions carrying a greater than 50% predicted likelihood of 1-year mortality. Modifications to the chronic lung disease, congestive heart failure, and cirrhosis criteria should be refined if they are to be included in future models.