In 2016, a suburban California emergency department began working on a new alert process designed to ensure medical patients not covered by alerts already in place would receive the same type of rapid, timely response that other alerts trigger. The resulting approach, dubbed “code critical,” has proven successful at accelerating care to a broad category of critically ill patients.
Certain hospitals are including information on their critical care triage policies in admission packets to explain how care or supplies will be allocated if rationing becomes necessary. Some clinicians feel ethically obligated to inform everyone up front of the possibility. Others think it is better to do so only if and when it becomes necessary.
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is the third most common cardiovascular condition behind myocardial infarction and stroke, with an incidence rate of about one per 1000 person-years.1,2 Nearly 5% of the population will experience
Although studies in animals and preliminary reports in patients with ARDS suggested that statin administration might be beneficial in patients with the syndrome, this multicenter, double-blind clinical trial showed no benefit from simvastatin by any measure examined.
In this study of administrative data from patients admitted to 421 U.S. hospitals with acute chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations, 41% received long-acting bronchodilators, which are not recommended in this setting. Comparison with patients who did not receive the long-acting agents showed no evidence for clinical or economic benefit from their use.
Based on a recent systematic review of the literature, clinical guidelines were developed by the American Association of Blood Banks with the goal of providing platelet transfusion thresholds for adult patients in common clinical scenarios.
Pain defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage1 is a common symptom experienced by critically ill patients.
Gershengorn and colleagues used prospectively collected data from the Project IMPACT database (a nationwide, voluntary, proprietary database for assessing performance of U.S. ICUs with respect to patient outcomes and numerous other variables) to examine the question of whether the use of arterial catheters (ACs) in critically ill, mechanically ventilated patients was associated with improved survival or other documentable benefits.
The Choosing Wisely Campaign was introduced in 2011 by the American Board of Internal Medicine to identify practices and procedures physicians and patients should question. The critical care top 5 list was developed through a collaborative effort of several critical care societies.
