Showing papers in "Journal of Critical Care in 2003"

TL;DR: Implementing the daily goals form resulted in a significant improvement in the percent of residents and nurses who understood the goals of care for the day and a reduction in ICU LOS.

TL;DR: Use of the discharge survey in this medication reconciliation process resulted in a dramatic drop in medications errors for patients discharged from an ICU.

TL;DR: Reduction of HRV on ICU admission may be useful in identifying septic patients at risk for development of MODS.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated seriously ill patients' preferred role in the decision-making process, what factors were associated with this role, and how this stated preference related to physicians' perception of preferred role.

TL;DR: Utilization of an important patient safety measure may be increased by focused interventions at an urban tertiary care hospital by increasing the utilization of the medical crisis response team.

TL;DR: This pilot study suggests that it is feasible to implement a broad set of ICU quality measures in a cohort of hospitals and that improving performance on these measures may realize reduced mortality, morbidity, and ICU length of stay.

TL;DR: Benchmarking can be used to identify ICUs with good patient survival and highly efficient resource use and the combination of policies and practices used by these units might improve resource use in other ICUs.

TL;DR: It is possible to provide safe and effective CRA with only commercially available solutions for units that do not want or cannot prepare extemporaneously made solutions.

TL;DR: Testing the unit cost of drotrecogin alfa (activated), pattern of resource use, and survival benefit, demonstrated that cost-effectiveness lies well within the range of other life saving interventions in Germany representing good economic value.

TL;DR: In this binational cross-sectional observational study of medical ICU patients, it was found that 92% of eligible patients received either UFH or LWMH for VTE prophylaxis, and differences in prescribing between countries include significantly greater use of LMWH in France, but use of lower doses than in Canada, and greater use in Canada.

TL;DR: PAC use on the day of admission to a medical ICU was associated with an increased risk for hospital death and this was a significant risk factor for hospital mortality.

TL;DR: The use of rhAPC for the treatment of patients with very severe sepsis, as determined by APACHE II score > or = 25, appears cost-effective, while treatment of Patients with APAChe II score < 25 is not cost- effective.

TL;DR: The transpulmonary thermodilution method is very accurate to detect changes in EVLW in normal lungs, but in edematous lung, this method may underestimate theEVLW.

TL;DR: Cardiopulmonary failure, as defined by SOFA, is common in intensive care unit patients with severe head injury and subarachnoid hemorrhage, and the mortality of patients with closed head injury or subaracheal hemorrhage was not related to the severity of organ dysfunction on admission or its development during theintensive care unit stay.

TL;DR: The frequency, causes, and effect of unsuccessful discharge decisions from the ICU of an 11-bed general intensive care unit of a 750-bed urban university hospital, tertiary referral center and level one trauma center were assessed.

TL;DR: Reversible myocardial dysfunction can be develop in critically ill patients without primary heart disease and this syndrome is associated with systolic dysfunction, segmental contractility disturbances and electrocardiographic changes.

TL;DR: An empiric description of intensive care unit (ICU) physicians' and nurses' experiences providing life-sustaining treatments at the insistence of family members, treatments that they believed should have been withheld or withdrawn is developed.

TL;DR: Australasian critical care services would be overwhelmed in the event of pandemic influenza, and more work is required in relation to modelling, contingency plans, and resource allocation.

TL;DR: The published evidence does not support a general claim that PCT is a useful decision support tool for diagnosing sepsis in patients who have SIRS, and procalcitonin has a slightly better ability to exclude the diagnosis of sepsi.

TL;DR: Arterial blood gas measurement is subject to a number of potential sources of error and some of these in the intensive care unit (ICU) are investigated, and samples were audited for adequate volume and the presence of air and found that all samples were of adequate volume, but 40% contained bubbles or froth.

TL;DR: The strongest evidence to date supports the use of NPPV in patients with ARF caused by exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); the benefit for patients with acute nonhypercarbic, hypoxemic respiratory failure is less clear.

TL;DR: Specific applications like clinical decision support systems and computerized patient care systems are designed to improve patient outcomes and clinical performance; randomized controlled trials to assess clinical effectiveness are important in their assessment.

TL;DR: During severe sepsis and septic shock, circulating endotoxin is a poor prognostic marker whereas the detection of an increase in IgM antiendotoxin antibody levels could identify survivors, suggesting a reactivation of the immune system.

TL;DR: Amikacin dosage individualization with low peak target concentrations was successful for the 36 ICU patients and was not associated with nephrotoxicity, but conclusions on clinical efficacy cannot be drawn from this limited study.

TL;DR: The problems of implementing major health service change and evaluating the effectiveness of that change presents a different challenge to evaluating a new drug or procedure and is approached within different research frameworks.

TL;DR: A systematic activation of alarm soundings for non-invasive blood pressure monitoring seemed unnecessary for the safety of ICU patients.

TL;DR: American- trained physicians discuss and document FLST more often than Eastern European-trained physicians, and patients are not medically competent to make FLST decisions.

TL;DR: Clinicians and administrators are readily able to identify shortcomings in the seasonal bed closure process in the ICU and these shortcomings should be targeted for improvement so that intensive care health services delivery is legitimate and fair.

TL;DR: Functional status impairment perceived by the ICU team is associated clearly with do-not-resuscitate directives in patients unable to participate in decision making, but the association appears much weaker in patients able to participateIn decision making.