Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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Review Comparative Study
Pro/con debate: continuous versus intermittent dialysis for acute kidney injury: a never-ending story yet approaching the finish?
The question of whether renal replacement therapy should be applied in an intermittent or continuous mode to the patient with acute kidney injury has been the topic of several controlled studies and meta-analyses. Although continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) has a theoretical advantage due to offering the opportunity to remove excess fluid more gradually, none of the several outcome studies that have been undertaken in the meanwhile was able to demonstrate its superiority over intermittent renal replacement therapy (IRRT). In the present article, therefore, questions are raised regarding which are the specific advantages of each strategy, and which are the specific populations that might benefit from their application. ⋯ CRRT is claimed to be better tolerated in combined acute liver and kidney failure and in acute brain injury. IRRT is more practical, flexible and cost-effective, allows the clinician to discontinue or to minimize anticoagulation with bleeding risks, and removes small solutes such as potassium more efficiently in acute life-threatening conditions. Sustained low-efficiency daily dialysis is a hybrid therapy combining most of the advantages of both options.
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Review
Bench-to-bedside review: the role of C1-esterase inhibitor in sepsis and other critical illnesses.
The purpose of this bench-to-bedside review is to summarize the literature relating to complement activation in sepsis and other critical illnesses and the role of C1-esterase inhibitor (C1 INH) as a potential therapy.
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Organ donation offers opportunities for people in critical care units to help save the lives of other patients. It is not always easy, however, to handle the transition from treating a patient to preserving a potential donor, and organ donation consistently provokes ethical questions in critical care units. What do we expect ethics to deliver? In light of a recent ethics conference in Denmark, we suggest that by acknowledging that decisions made in the clinic rarely abide to rational decision trees with clear ethical priorities, we can better learn from each other's experiences. We suggest embracing an 'ethics of muddling through' to enhance relevant reflections and stimulate a productive dialogue among health professionals.
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Somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) recordings and continuous electroencephalography (EEG) are important tools with which to predict Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) scores. Their combined use may potentially allow for early detection of neurological impairment and more effective treatment of clinical deterioration. ⋯ The combined use of SEPs and continuous EEG monitoring is a unique example of dynamic brain monitoring. The temporal variation of these two parameters evaluated by continuous monitoring can establish whether the treatments used for patients receiving neurocritical care are properly tailored to the neurological changes induced by the lesions responsible for secondary damage.
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Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the most frequent causes of death in the world. In highly qualified emergency medical service (EMS) systems, including well trained emergency physicians, spontaneous circulation may be restored in up to 53% of patients at least until admission to hospital. Compared with these highly qualified EMS systems, in other systems markedly lower success rates are observed. These data clearly show that there are considerable differences between EMS systems concerning treatment success following cardiac arrest and resuscitation, although in all systems international guidelines for resuscitation are used. This study investigates the impact of response time reliability (RTR) on cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) incidence and resuscitation success using return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after cardiac arrest (RACA) score and data from seven German EMS systems participating in the German Resuscitation Registry. ⋯ This study demonstrates that on the level of EMS systems, faster ones will more often initiate CPR and will increase number of patients admitted to hospital alive. Furthermore it is shown that with very different approaches, all adhering to and intensely training in the ERC guidelines 2005, superior and, according to international comparison, excellent success rates following resuscitation may be achieved.