Articles: critical-illness.
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To determine the clinical significance of fever in geriatric emergency department patients. ⋯ Fever among geriatric ED patients frequently marks the presence of serious illness. All such patients should be strongly considered for hospital admission, particularly when certain clinical features are present. The absence of abnormal findings does not reliably rule out the possibility of serious illness.
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Much of today's medical care relies on experience unsupported by investigation, and emergency medical care is no exception; research is necessary to improve this care. Critically ill and injured patients are the patients who will benefit the most from improvements in emergency medical diagnostic and treatment methods. Yet, the federal bureaucracy has effectively banned research on these patients, since they cannot generally give "informed consent." We argue that, with the proper safeguards, research on critically ill and injured patients should be performed in the emergency medicine (EDs and EMS) settings without informed consent. To require such consent when not obtainable compromises both the researchers who must get such consent and the patients who must continue to endure old, and often untested therapies.
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Although many of the measurements and techniques outlined in this article may be epidemiologically useful and correlate with morbidity and mortality, no single indicator is of consistent value in the nutritional assessment of critically ill patients. Measurements such as anthropometrics, total body fat estimation, or delayed hypersensitivity skin testing either are liable to non-nutritional influences or lack accuracy and precision in individual patients. Plasma concentrations of hepatic proteins are affected significantly by the patient's underlying disease state and therapeutic interventions and therefore lack specificity. ⋯ The biochemical measurement of levels of vitamins, minerals, and trace elements is invaluable in demonstrating specific deficiencies associated with disease and assessing whether long-term nutritional support is adequate. Such measurements rarely are necessary to make the initial clinical decision to give nutritional support, however. The most widely used measures of nutritional state are nitrogen balance and secretory protein concentrations, and these indices improve when sick patients recover.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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This study was undertaken to assess any salivary aspiration in seriously ill patients with tracheostomies in an Intensive Care Unit setting. The alpha-amylase activity in the tracheostomies in an Intensive Care Unit setting. The alpha-amylase activity in the tracheobronchial secretions of 15 such patients were analysed to evaluate the incidence of salivary aspiration. ⋯ The other nine patients showed a low level of amylase activity in their secretions. Two patients in the latter group developed severe pulmonary disease. This study demonstrates that a high level of alpha-amylase activity in the tracheobronchial secretions of tracheotomized, ventilated patients indicates that salivary aspiration may be taking place, and further suggests that progressively increasing levels may indicate the likelihood of a major pulmonary complication developing.
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To determine the incidence and effect of unrecognized cardiac injury in critically ill patients. ⋯ The incidence of myocardial injury defined by elevated levels of cardiac troponin I was unexpectedly high and associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Clinically, it was often unrecognized.