Current opinion in critical care
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Decisions made in critical care are often complicated, requiring an in-depth understanding of the relations between complex diseases, available interventions, and patients with a wide range of characteristics. Standard modeling techniques such as decision trees and statistical modeling have difficulty in capturing these interactions as the complexity of the problem increases. ⋯ Simulation models provide useful tools for organizing and analyzing the interactions between therapies, tradeoffs, and outcomes.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2004
ReviewBayesian analysis, pattern analysis, and data mining in health care.
To discuss the current role of data mining and Bayesian methods in biomedicine and heath care, in particular critical care. ⋯ With the increasing availability of biomedical and health-care data with a wide range of characteristics there is an increasing need to use methods which allow modeling the uncertainties that come with the problem, are capable of dealing with missing data, allow integrating data from various sources, explicitly indicate statistical dependence and independence, and allow integrating biomedical and clinical background knowledge. These requirements have given rise to an influx of new methods into the field of data analysis in health care, in particular from the fields of machine learning and probabilistic graphical models.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2004
ReviewInflammation and cardiovascular diseases: lessons that can be learned for the patient with cardiogenic shock in the intensive care unit.
In the past 12 years, atherosclerosis and the acute coronary syndromes have turned out to be thromboinflammatory diseases. Recent data suggest that inflammation also plays an important role in the pathogenesis and outcome of cardiogenic shock. This review will summarize recent advances in the understanding of the pathophysiology of cardiogenic shock related to the inflammatory network and will discuss recent findings in the treatment of patients with cardiogenic shock in relation to these new insights. ⋯ The promising results of studies that tested a potential benefit of drugs with clear or potential antiinflammatory/immunomodulatory properties in patients with cardiogenic shock underscores the importance of the inflammatory network in the pathogenesis and outcome of this devastating complication of cardiovascular disease.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2004
ReviewAdvances in statistical methodology and their application in critical care.
To review some of the major advances in statistical methodology of the past two decades and their application to investigations in critical care. ⋯ By becoming familiar with advances in statistical methodology, researchers and clinicians can enhance collaboration with their statistical colleagues, toward the goal of better study design and analysis.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2004
ReviewPostbypass arrhythmias: pathophysiology, prevention, and therapy.
To review the medical literature on new-onset arrhythmias after cardiac bypass surgery in adults, focusing on the most recent advances on this topic. ⋯ Recent studies demonstrate a continued effort to improve our knowledge about postbypass arrhythmias. New insights in the pathophysiology of postoperative cardiac arrhythmias and advances in prevention and therapy are rapid and results are heterogeneous, so it is difficult for the clinician to keep abreast with these new findings.