Annals of internal medicine
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Understanding the risk factors for ventilator-associated pneumonia can help to assess prognosis and devise and test preventive strategies. ⋯ The daily risk for pneumonia decreases with increasing duration of stay in the intensive care unit. Witnessed aspiration and exposure to paralytic agents are potentially modifiable independent risk factors. Exposure to antibiotics was associated with low rates of early ventilator-associated pneumonia, but this effect attenuates over time.
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Epinephrine is the drug of choice in advanced cardiac life support, but it can have deleterious side effects after restoration of spontaneous circulation. ⋯ The results indicate that an increasing cumulative dose of epinephrine administered during resuscitation is independently associated with unfavorable neurologic outcome after ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest.
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The use of self-report screening tests for alcohol use disorders in the primary care setting has been advocated. ⋯ A marked inconsistency in the accuracy of common self-report screening tests for alcohol use disorders was found when these tests were used in a single clinical site with male and female family practice patients of different ethnic backgrounds. The AUDIT does not seem to be affected by ethnic and sex bias.