Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Mar 2003
Comparative StudyTracheobronchial injury during intratracheal pulmonary ventilation in rabbits.
We compared tracheobronchial injury following short-term intratracheal pulmonary ventilation (ITPV) and conventional mechanical ventilation (CMV) in a healthy rabbit model. ITPV, a form of tracheal gas insufflation, has been shown to decrease deadspace ventilation and increase CO2 removal and therefore may reduce ventilator-induced lung injury. ⋯ In our study, ITPV, compared with CMV at the same minute ventilation, was associated with a significantly greater difference in tracheobronchial damage at the carina and main bronchus. We postulate that this difference may have been caused by the turbulence of the gas flow generated by the small-caliber ITPV catheter used in our neonatal-size animal model.
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Critical care medicine · Mar 2003
Labeled acetate to assess intestinal absorption in critically ill patients.
To compare the absorption of carbon-13(13C) acetate-enriched nutrients with D-xylose absorption. ⋯ Gastric and jejunal 13C acetate are rapidly absorbed in critically ill surgical patients requiring enteral nutrition, contrasting with a depressed or delayed D-xylose absorption. 13CO2 recovery kinetics was similar after jejunal or intravenous 13C acetate and slightly depressed after gastric administration. Further studies are required to determine the value of labeled nutrients to assess gastric emptying and intestinal absorption.
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Critical care medicine · Mar 2003
Resolution of ventilator-associated pneumonia: prospective evaluation of the clinical pulmonary infection score as an early clinical predictor of outcome.
To prospectively evaluate the performance of the Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score (CPIS) and its components to identify early in the hospital course of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) which patients are responding to therapy. ⋯ Serial measurements of CPIS can define the clinical course of VAP resolution, identifying those with good outcome as early as day 3, and could possibly be of help to define strategies to shorten the duration of therapy.