Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Jul 2022
Observational StudyEtiology, Treatments, and Outcomes of Patients With Severe Community-Acquired Pneumonia in a Large U.S. Sample.
Compare the clinical practice and outcomes in severe community-acquired pneumonia (sCAP) patients to those in non-sCAP patients using guideline-defined criteria for sCAP. ⋯ sCAP patients had worse outcomes and twice the rate of culture positivity. S. aureus and S. pneumoniae were the most common organisms in respiratory and blood specimens, respectively. Although only recommended for sCAP patients, nearly all pneumonia patients received blood cultures, a quarter of nonsevere patients received sputum cultures, and treatment with broad-spectrum agents was widespread, indicating fertile ground for antimicrobial and diagnostic stewardship programs.
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Critical care medicine · Jul 2022
Lung Ultrasound and Electrical Impedance Tomography During Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury.
Lung damage during mechanical ventilation involves lung volume and alveolar water content, and lung ultrasound (LUS) and electrical impedance tomography changes are related to these variables. We investigated whether these techniques may detect any signal modification during the development of ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). ⋯ Data suggest as follows. First, what determines the LUS score is the ratio between water and gas and not water alone. Therefore, caution is needed when an improvement of LUS score follows a variation of the lung gas content, as after a PEEP increase. Second, what determines the end-expiratory difference in lung impedance is the strain level that may disrupt the intercellular junction, therefore altering lung impedance. In addition, the increase in extravascular lung water during VILI development contributed to the observed decrease in impedance.