Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Dec 2021
Prevalence and Clinical Impact of Reduced Coagulation Factor XII Activity in Patients Receiving Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation provides large surface exposure to human blood leading to coagulation activation. Only limited clinical data are available on contact activation and coagulation factor XII activity in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients. ⋯ We observed a high prevalence of reduced coagulation factor XII activity in adult patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which may confound activated partial thromboplastin time measurements and limit its clinical usefulness for monitoring and titrating anticoagulation with unfractionated heparin. Lower coagulation factor XII activity was associated with less thromboembolic complications, which may highlight the potential of coagulation factor XII to serve as a target for anticoagulation in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
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Critical care medicine · Dec 2021
Observational StudyAssociation Between an Increase in Serum Sodium and In-Hospital Mortality in Critically Ill Patients.
In critically ill patients, dysnatremia is common, and in these patients, in-hospital mortality is higher. It remains unknown whether changes of serum sodium after ICU admission affect mortality, especially whether normalization of mild hyponatremia improves survival. ⋯ An increase in serum sodium in the first 48 hours of ICU admission was associated with higher in-hospital mortality in patients admitted with normonatremia and in patients admitted with hypernatremia.
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Critical care medicine · Dec 2021
Automated Assessment of Brain CT After Cardiac Arrest-An Observational Derivation/Validation Cohort Study.
Prognostication of outcome is an essential step in defining therapeutic goals after cardiac arrest. Gray-white-matter ratio obtained from brain CT can predict poor outcome. However, manual placement of regions of interest is a potential source of error and interrater variability. Our objective was to assess the performance of poor outcome prediction by automated quantification of changes in brain CTs after cardiac arrest. ⋯ Automated gray-white-matter ratio from brain CT is a promising tool for prediction of poor neurologic outcome after cardiac arrest with high specificity and low-to-moderate sensitivity. Prediction by gray-white-matter ratio at the basal ganglia level performed best. Sensitivity increased considerably for CTs performed later than 24 hours after cardiac arrest.
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Critical care medicine · Dec 2021
Discordance Between Respiratory Drive and Sedation Depth in Critically Ill Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilation.
In mechanically ventilated patients, deep sedation is often assumed to induce "respirolysis," that is, lyse spontaneous respiratory effort, whereas light sedation is often assumed to preserve spontaneous effort. This study was conducted to determine validity of these common assumptions, evaluating the association of respiratory drive with sedation depth and ventilator-free days in acute respiratory failure. ⋯ Sedation depth is not a reliable marker of respiratory drive during critical illness. Respiratory drive can be low, moderate, or high across the range of routinely targeted sedation depth.