Annals of intensive care
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Annals of intensive care · Dec 2015
Quality of transition to end-of-life care for cancer patients in the intensive care unit.
There have been few studies that have evaluated the quality of end-of-life care (EOLC) for cancer patients in the ICU. The aim of this study was to explore the quality of transition to EOLC for cancer patients in ICU. ⋯ Advanced EOLC planning in patients with progressive disease prior to acute deterioration is warranted to enable patients' wishes to be fulfilled and ceiling of treatments agreed. Better documentation and development of validated tools to measure the quality EOLC transition on the ICU are needed.
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Annals of intensive care · Dec 2015
Admission vitamin D status is associated with discharge destination in critically ill surgical patients.
Discharge destination after critical illness is increasingly recognized as a valuable patient-centered outcome. Recently, vitamin D status has been shown to be associated with important outcomes such as length of stay (LOS) and mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Our goal was to investigate whether vitamin D status on ICU admission is associated with discharge destination. ⋯ Our results suggest that vitamin D status may be a modifiable risk factor for non-home discharge destination in surgical ICU patients. Future randomized, controlled trials are needed to determine whether vitamin D supplementation in surgical ICU patients can improve clinical outcomes such as the successful rate of discharge to home after critical illness.
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Annals of intensive care · Dec 2015
Low-dose corticosteroid treatment and mortality in refractory abdominal septic shock after emergency laparotomy.
The role of low-dose corticosteroid as an adjunctive treatment for abdominal septic shock remains controversial. ⋯ Low-dose corticosteroid administration may be associated with reduced in-hospital mortality in patients with refractory septic shock following emergency laparotomy for lower intestinal perforation.
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Annals of intensive care · Dec 2015
Prolonged prone positioning under VV-ECMO is safe and improves oxygenation and respiratory compliance.
Data are sparse regarding the effects of prolonged prone positioning (PP) during VV-ECMO. Previous studies, using short sessions (<12 h), failed to find any effects on respiratory system compliance. In the present analysis, the effects of prolonged PP sessions (24 h) were retrospectively studied with regard to safety data, oxygenation and respiratory system compliance. ⋯ When used in combination with VV-ECMO, 24 h of prone positioning improves both oxygenation and respiratory system compliance. Moreover, our study confirms the absence of serious adverse events.
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Annals of intensive care · Dec 2015
Mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative bacilli.
The burden of multidrug resistance in Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) now represents a daily issue for the management of antimicrobial therapy in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. In Enterobacteriaceae, the dramatic increase in the rates of resistance to third-generation cephalosporins mainly results from the spread of plasmid-borne extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL), especially those belonging to the CTX-M family. The efficacy of beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor associations for severe infections due to ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae has not been adequately evaluated in critically ill patients, and carbapenems still stands as the first-line choice in this situation. ⋯ In non-fermenting GNB such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, multidrug resistance may emerge following the sole occurrence of sequential chromosomal mutations, which may lead to the overproduction of intrinsic beta-lactamases, hyper-expression of efflux pumps, target modifications and permeability alterations. P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii also have the ability to acquire mobile genetic elements encoding resistance determinants, including carbapenemases. Available options for the treatment of ICU-acquired infections due to carbapenem-resistant GNB are currently scarce, and recent reports emphasizing the spread of colistin resistance in environments with high volume of polymyxins use elicit major concern.