Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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The prediction of infection and its severity remains difficult in the critically ill. A novel, simple biomarker derived from five blood-cell derived parameters that characterize the innate immune response in routine blood samples, the intensive care infection score (ICIS), could be helpful in this respect. We therefore compared the predictive value of the ICIS with that of the white blood cell count (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) for infection and its severity in critically ill patients. ⋯ The data suggest that the ICIS is potentially useful for the prediction of infection and its severity in critically ill patients, non-inferiorly to CRP and PCT. In contrast to CRP and PCT, the ICIS can be determined routinely without extra blood sampling and lower costs, yielding results within 15 minutes.
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The RIFLE classification was introduced in 2004 to describe the presence of acute kidney injury (AKI) and to define its clinical stage, based upon the serum creatinine level and urine output. The same criteria, although slightly modified, are used in the other scoring systems AKIN and KDIGO. Mortality and morbidity remain high in AKI, suggesting that current diagnostic methods are suboptimal, poorly accurate, and often timely inadequate in detecting the presence of early kidney injury. ⋯ Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin or cell cycle arrest biomarkers seem to be sensitive and specific enough to be used in conjunction with existing markers of AKI for better classifying renal injury as well as dysfunction. Improvements in diagnosis, risk identification, stratification, prognosis, and therapeutic monitoring may improve prevention and protection from organ damage and help to identify patients at risk, allowing individualized therapy. In this view, we may say that AKI diagnosis has finally moved from clinical to molecular level with potential benefits for the patients because similar progress has been shown in other disciplines.
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Increasing evidence suggests that after the first pro-inflammatory hours, sepsis is characterized by the occurrence of severe immunosuppression. Several mechanisms have been reported to participate in sepsis-induced immune alterations affecting both innate and adaptive immunity. ⋯ Herein, perspectives regarding co-inhibitory receptors' contribution to lymphocyte exhaustion in sepsis will be discussed in the context of a recently published study investigating the potential of PD-1 molecule expression (i.e. PD-1 on lymphocytes, PD-L1 on monocytes) to predict mortality in septic shock patients.
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Acute kidney injury (AKI) complicates recovery from cardiac surgery in up to 30 % of patients, injures and impairs the function of the brain, lungs, and gut, and places patients at a 5-fold increased risk of death during hospitalization. Renal ischemia, reperfusion, inflammation, hemolysis, oxidative stress, cholesterol emboli, and toxins contribute to the development and progression of AKI. Preventive strategies are limited, but current evidence supports maintenance of renal perfusion and intravascular volume while avoiding venous congestion, administration of balanced salt as opposed to high-chloride intravenous fluids, and the avoidance or limitation of cardiopulmonary bypass exposure. ⋯ Cardiac surgery continues to be a popular clinical model to evaluate novel therapeutics, off-label use of existing medications, and nonpharmacologic treatments for AKI, since cardiac surgery is fairly common, typically elective, provides a relatively standardized insult, and patients remain hospitalized and monitored following surgery. More efficient and time-sensitive methods to diagnose AKI are imperative to reduce this negative outcome. The discovery and validation of renal damage biomarkers should in time supplant creatinine-based criteria for the clinical diagnosis of AKI.