Current opinion in critical care
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2014
Review Historical ArticleA history of outcome prediction in the ICU.
There are few first-hand accounts that describe the history of outcome prediction in critical care. This review summarizes the authors' personal perspectives about the development and evolution of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation over the past 35 years. ⋯ There is increasing evidence that superior accuracy in outcome prediction requires complex modeling with detailed adjustment for diagnosis and physiologic abnormalities. Thus, an automated electronic system is recommended for gathering data and generating predictions. Support, either public or private, is required to assist users and to update and improve models. Current outcome prediction models have increasingly focused on benchmarks for resource use, a trend that seems likely to increase in the future.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2014
ReviewIs there still a role for low-dose dopamine use in acute heart failure?
Acute heart failure (AHF) is a major health problem worldwide, with no proven therapy. Low-dose dopamine has been used in this entity to improve renal outcomes in the past decades. The aim of this article is to review the former and recent clinical trials about the use of low-dose dopamine in AHF. ⋯ On the basis of the current data, there is no role for the routine use of low-dose dopamine in nonhypotensive patients with AHF. Further studies are needed to define the role of low-dose dopamine in patients with AHF and hypotension. Until the availability of more data, the use of dopamine in AHF should be individualized.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Oct 2014
ReviewSetting the vision: applied patient-reported outcomes and smart, connected digital healthcare systems to improve patient-centered outcomes prediction in critical illness.
Prediction models in critical illness are generally limited to short-term mortality and uncommonly include patient-centered outcomes. Current outcome prediction tools are also insensitive to individual context or evolution in healthcare practice, potentially limiting their value over time. Improved prognostication of patient-centered outcomes in critical illness could enhance decision-making quality in the ICU. ⋯ A learning health system infrastructure integrating electronic patient-reported outcomes may aid in the management of critical illness-associated conditions and yield tools to improve prognostication of patient-centered outcomes in critical illness.
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Therapeutic hypothermia following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest improves neurological recovery. Coupled with neurological benefit, multiple complications including infection have been associated with therapeutic hypothermia following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. In this review, we will discuss therapeutic hypothermia, and more broadly, temperature management, as a risk for ICU infection. ⋯ Studies demonstrate increased rate of pneumonia and bacteremia but decreased rate of other infections, suggesting redistribution but no overall increased risk of infection per se. The diagnosis of infection during therapeutic hypothermia does not impact mortality or neurological recovery.
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To describe why the prediction of ICU outcomes is essential to underpin critical care quality improvement programmes. ⋯ Risk-adjusted mortality has strong support from the critical care community as a quality indicator for benchmarking ICU performance but is dependent on up-to-date, accurate risk models. ICU outcome prediction can also contribute to both randomized and nonrandomized research and potentially contribute to individual patient management, although generic risk models should not be used to guide individual treatment decisions.