Anaesthesia
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Clinical Trial
Analysis of exhaled breath to identify critically ill patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia.
Ventilator-associated pneumonia commonly occurs in critically ill patients. Clinical suspicion results in overuse of antibiotics, which in turn promotes antimicrobial resistance. Detection of volatile organic compounds in the exhaled breath of critically ill patients might allow earlier detection of pneumonia and avoid unnecessary antibiotic prescription. ⋯ Ninety-six participants were enrolled in the trial, with exhaled breath available from 92. Of all compounds tested, the four highest performing candidate biomarkers were benzene, cyclohexanone, pentanol and undecanal with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve ranging from 0.67 to 0.77 and negative predictive values from 85% to 88%. Identified volatile organic compounds in the exhaled breath of mechanically ventilated critically ill patients show promise as a useful non-invasive 'rule-out' test for ventilator-associated pneumonia.
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Virtual reality is a form of high-fidelity simulation that may be used to enhance the quality of medical education. We created a bespoke virtual reality trainer software using high resolution motion capture and ultrasound imagery to teach cognitive-motor needling skills necessary for the performance of ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia. The primary objective of this study was to determine the construct validity between novice and experienced regional anaesthetists. ⋯ The virtual reality trainer was rated as being comparably immersive to other high-fidelity virtual reality software in the realism, possibility to act and quality of interface subscales (all p > 0.06) but not in the possibility to examine and self-performance subscales (all p < 0.009). The virtual reality trainer created workloads similar to those reported in real-life procedural medicine (p = 0.53). This study achieved initial validation of our new virtual reality trainer and allows progression to a planned definitive trial that will compare the effectiveness of virtual reality training on real-life regional anaesthesia performance.