Acta anaesthesiologica Scandinavica
-
Acta Anaesthesiol Scand · Aug 2020
Review Multicenter Study Observational StudyB-Lines for the assessment of extravascular lung water: just focused or semi-quantitative?
B-lines as typical artefacts of lung ultrasound are considered as surrogate measurement for extravascular lung water. However, B-lines develop in the sub-pleural space and do not allow assessment of the whole lung. Here, we present data from the first observational multi-centre study focusing on the correlation between a B-lines score and extravascular lung water in critically ill patients suffering from a variety of diseases. ⋯ Assessment of B-lines does not accurately reflect actual extravascular lung water. In presence of an impaired oxygenation, B-lines may reliably indicate increased extravascular lung water as cause of the oxygenation disorders.
-
Acta Anaesthesiol Scand · Aug 2020
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Observational StudyEffects of simulated sample sizes on the mortality effect estimatesinthreerandomised intensive care unittrials.
Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are occasionally stopped prematurely before reaching their planned sample sizes. It has been suggested that early stopped RCTs are associated with under- and overestimation of the effect estimates. We simulated the effect of hypothetical premature stopping of three large RCTs done in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting. ⋯ In this post hoc study of three international RCTs within intensive care, we found that the simulated interim mortality effect estimates showed considerable fluctuations until at least 20%-30% of the sample size was included, but remained instable until the final sample sizes had been included. Thus, this study illustrates the necessity for cautious interpretations of prematurely stopped trials.