Articles: mechanical-ventilation.
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Critical care clinics · Oct 2017
ReviewManagement Strategies for Severe Respiratory Failure: As Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Is Being Considered.
Pulmonary and critical care physicians must be facile in recognition and management of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Part of the current critical care knowledge base must include an understanding of how extracorporeal membrane oxygenation fits into the paradigm of ARDS management without using it as a "salvage therapy." This article provides a basic understanding of the evolution of ARDS to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, recognizing benefits and limits of rescue therapies, indications and contraindications of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and coordination of care for severe respiratory failure.
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Journal of critical care · Oct 2017
ReviewExtracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) as a treatment strategy for severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the low tidal volume era: A systematic review.
To evaluate the hospital survival in patients with severe ARDS managed with ECMO and low tidal volume ventilation as compared to patients managed with low tidal volume ventilation alone. ⋯ Given the lack of studies with appropriate control groups, our confidence in a difference in outcome between the two therapies remains weak. Future studies on the use of ECMO for severe ARDS are needed to clarify the role of ECMO in this disease.
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Intensive care medicine · Sep 2017
ReviewThe intensive care medicine research agenda for airways, invasive and noninvasive mechanical ventilation.
In an important sense, support of the respiratory system has been a defining characteristic of intensive care since its inception. The pace of basic and clinical research in this field has escalated over the past two decades, resulting in palpable improvement at the bedside as measured by both efficacy and outcome. As in all medical research, however, novel ideas built upon observations are continually proposed, tested, and either retained or discarded on the basis of the persuasiveness of the evidence. What follows are concise descriptions of the current standards of management practice in respiratory support, the areas of present-day uncertainty, and our suggested agenda for the near future of research aimed at testing current assumptions, probing uncertainties, and solidifying the foundation on which to base our progress to the next level.
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Intensive care medicine · Sep 2017
ReviewThe Intensive Care Medicine research agenda on critically ill oncology and hematology patients.
Over the coming years, accelerating progress against cancer will be associated with an increased number of patients who require life-sustaining therapies for infectious or toxic chemotherapy-related events. Major changes include increased number of cancer patients admitted to the ICU with full-code status or for time-limited trials, increased survival and quality of life in ICU survivors, changing prognostic factors, early ICU admission for optimal monitoring, and use of noninvasive diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. ⋯ The research agenda they suggest includes important studies to be conducted in the next few years to increase our understanding of organ dysfunction in this population and to improve our ability to appropriately use life-saving therapies or select new therapeutic approaches that are likely to improve outcomes. This review aims to provide more guidance for the daily management of patients with cancer, in whom outcomes are constantly improving, as is our global ability to fight against what is becoming the leading cause of mortality in industrialized and non-industrialized countries.
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The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for respiratory failure in adults is growing rapidly, driven in large part by advances in technology, which have made ECMO devices easier to implement and safer and more efficient. Accompanying this increase in use is a nearly exponential increase in ECMO-related literature. ⋯ The overall lack of high-quality data, including prospective randomized trials, makes it difficult to justify the rate at which ECMO use is increasing and calls attention to the need for more rigorously designed studies. Nonetheless, given its ability to support patients with severe gas exchange impairment and the potential for it to minimize the deleterious effects of invasive mechanical ventilation, there appears to be a legitimate role for ECMO in severe respiratory failure in adults.