American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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Comparative Study
Urinary bladder/pulmonary artery temperature ratio of less than 1 and shivering in cardiac surgical patients.
Temperature gradients that normally exist between body areas may be altered as a result of heat generated by shivering. ⋯ Pulmonary artery and urinary bladder temperatures are readily available clinically. The combination of a ratio of less than 1 and an increase in rate pressure product should be considered suggestive of shivering in coronary artery bypass graft patients.
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Critical care medicine programs must provide outpatient experience for their fellowship trainees. We have developed an unusual follow-up plan allowing critical care fellows to contact their patients months after their intensive care unit stay. We evaluated responses of 46 patients after a mean interval of 8.6 months since their initial intensive care unit stay. ⋯ Diagnostically, the patients represented the typical medical-surgical intensive care unit population. Patients were asked 11 questions concerning their health and socio-emotional status as it related to their hospitalization and intensive care unit stay. Our results established a practical method of providing outpatient follow-up that may fulfill residency review requirements for critical care fellowships, confirmed previously speculative ideas about ICU experiences, and suggested future research opportunities to study intensive care unit patients following discharge.
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Critical care, as a specialty in both nursing and medicine, is well recognized and the number of people requiring hospitalization for critical illnesses continues to increase. The purpose of this paper is to examine the future and the changes that lie ahead in critical care. ⋯ A variety of changes in critical care are anticipated that reflect our increasing abilities in biotechnology, basic and clinical research, and data management. These changes are viewed for their obvious impact on cost, ethical controversies, and patient care and outcome.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Clinical comparison of two- and three-wavelength systems for continuous measurement of venous oxygen saturation.
To evaluate clinically the accuracy of continuous SvO2 systems to reflect reference SvO2 values over a 24-hour period. ⋯ The results of this clinical study confirmed a previous study in dogs, showing that SvO2 is measured more accurately by the three-wavelength continuous monitoring system.