Journal of clinical monitoring and computing
-
Understanding the use of patient monitoring systems in emergency and acute facilities may help to identify reasons for failure to identify risk patients in these settings. Hence, we investigate factors related to the utilization of automated monitoring for patients admitted to an acute admission unit by introducing monitor load as the proportion between monitored time and length of stay. A cohort study of patients admitted and registered to patient monitors in the period from 10/10/2013 to 1/10/2014 at the acute admission unit of Odense University Hospital in Denmark. ⋯ Higher levels of severity were related to higher degrees of monitoring, but being admitted to the surgical wing reduce how much patients were monitored, and periods with many concurrent patients lead to a small increase in monitoring. We found a significant variation concerning how much patients were monitored during admission to an acute admission unit. Our results point to potential patient safety improvements in clinical procedures, and advocate an awareness of how patient monitoring systems are utilized.
-
J Clin Monit Comput · Jun 2017
ReviewUltrasonography in the preoperative difficult airway assessment.
To evaluate the utility of ultrasound for detection of the difficult intubation in a preoperative setting. PubMed, Ovid, CINAHL Plus Full Text, and Google Scholar searches using ["difficult airway" OR "difficult intubation" OR "difficult laryngoscopy" OR "difficult ventilation"] AND [ultrasonography OR sonography OR ultrasound] without date limitations. Abstracts without publications, case reports, letters, textbooks, unrelated topics, or foreign language articles were excluded. ⋯ Significance for sonographic prediction of difficult laryngoscopy occurred at three locations: hyomental distance [52.6 ± 5.8 mm (p < 0.01)], anterior tissue at the hyoid bone [16.9 mm (95 % CI 11.9-21.9) and 15.9 ± 2.7 mm (p < 0.0001)], and the thyrohyoid membrane [34.7 mm (95 % CI 28.8-40.7) and 23.9 ± 3.4 mm (p < 0.0001) and 28.25 ± 4.43 mm (p < 0.001)]. The vocal cords and sternal notch levels have conflicting significance. Limitations include the heterogeneous populations and lack of standard scanning protocols.
-
J Clin Monit Comput · Jun 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialPerformance of a closed-loop feedback computer-controlled infusion system for maintaining blood pressure during spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section: a randomized controlled comparison of norepinephrine versus phenylephrine.
Closed-loop feedback computer-controlled vasopressor infusion has been previously described for maintaining blood pressure during spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section but there are limited data available comparing the relative performance of different vasopressors. The aim of this study was to compare the performance of norepinephrine versus phenylephrine in this system. Data from a randomized, two-arm parallel group, double-blinded controlled trial were reanalyzed. 104 patients scheduled for elective caesarean section under spinal anaesthesia were randomized to receive computer-controlled closed-loop infusion of either norepinephrine 5 µg ml-1 or phenylephrine 100 µg ml-1. ⋯ In addition, median performance error was smaller (0.75 [-1.56-2.52] %) versus 2.61 [0.83-4.57] %, P = 0.002) and wobble was smaller (2.85 [2.07-5.17] %) versus 3.39 [2.62-4.90] %, P = 0.028) in the norepinephrine group versus the phenylephrine group. Divergence was similar between groups. The precision of the control of blood pressure was greater with norepinephrine compared with phenylephrine at the drug concentrations used.