critical care & emergency

CONTEXT: Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are one of the most common and troublesome nonmalignant conditions affecting quality of life in aging men. A spectrum of established medical and surgical options is available to provide relief of bothersome LUTS. Both the adverse events of medication and the morbidity with surgical treatment modalities have to be counterbalanced against efficacy. Novel minimally invasive treatment options aim to be effective, ideally to be performed in an ambulatory setting under local anaesthesia and to offer a more favourable safety profile than existing reference techniques...

Severe epilepsy in children and young adults can significantly affect the lives of their caregivers. However, the lack of a reliable and valid measure of caregiver impact has limited our understanding of the scope and correlates of this impact, as well as our ability to measure the effects of treatments that could lessen it. The purpose of this study was to facilitate focus groups and interviews with an international group of clinician experts and caregivers to identify the most important domains that should be assessed in a measure of caregiver impact...

BACKGROUND: Rural midwifery and maternity care is vulnerable due to geographical isolation, staffing recruitment and retention. Highlighting the concerns within rural midwifery is important for safe sustainable service delivery. METHOD: Hermeneutic phenomenological study undertaken in New Zealand (NZ). 13 participants were recruited in rural regions through snowball technique and interviewed. Transcribed interview data was interpretively analysed. Findings are discussed through the use of philosophical notions and related published literature...

BACKGROUND: Publication bias within systematic reviews may result in incorrect conclusions leading to inappropriate clinical decisions and a decreased quality of patient care. Searching clinical trial registries for unpublished studies is one possible solution to minimise publication bias. OBJECTIVES: To examine rates of clinical trial registry searches in systematic reviews published in respected anaesthesiology journals and whether these searches found trials (or data) eligible for inclusion; to compare rates of registry searches between published reviews and similar reviews within the Cochrane Anaesthesia, Critical and Emergency Care Group; to conduct trial registry searches for a subset of reviews, determining whether eligible studies were overlooked; to investigate whether reporting of results in completed anaesthesia trials on ClinicalTrials...

BACKGROUND: Telemedicine has been proposed as one strategy to improve local trauma care and decrease disparities between rural and urban trauma outcomes. OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to describe the effect of telemedicine on management and clinical outcomes for trauma patients in North Dakota. METHODS: Cohort study of adult (age ≥18 years) trauma patients treated in North Dakota Critical Access Hospital (CAH) Emergency Departments (EDs) from 2008 to 2014...

OBJECTIVE Recent observational data suggest that ultra-early treatment of ruptured aneurysms prevents rebleeding, thus improving clinical outcomes. However, advances in critical care management of patients with ruptured aneurysms may reduce the rate of rebleeding in comparison with earlier trials, such as the International Cooperative Study on the Timing of Aneurysm Surgery. The objective of the present study was to determine if an ultra-early aneurysm repair protocol will or will not significantly reduce the number of incidents of rebleeding following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH)...

The biopsychosocial model outlined in Engel's classic Science paper four decades ago emerged from dissatisfaction with the biomedical model of illness, which remains the dominant healthcare model. Engel's call to arms for a biopsychosocial model has been taken up in several healthcare fields, but it has not been accepted in the more economically dominant and politically powerful acute medical and surgical domains. It is widely used in research into complex healthcare interventions, it is the basis of the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Functioning (WHO ICF), it is used clinically, and it is used to structure clinical guidelines...

Making cancer treatment more effective is one of the grand challenges in our health care system. However, many drugs have entered clinical trials but so far showed limited efficacy or induced rapid development of resistance. We urgently need multi-targeted drug combinations, which shall selectively inhibit the cancer cells and block the emergence of drug resistance. The book chapter focuses on mathematical and computational tools to facilitate the discovery of the most promising drug combinations to improve efficacy and prevent resistance...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: In Japan, nafamostat mesylate (NM) is frequently used as an anticoagulant during continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT). The dialyzer membrane AN69ST has been reported to adsorb NM and affect the management of anticoagulant therapy. However, the adsorbed amount has not yet been quantitatively assessed. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated the pre- and post-hemofilter prolongation of the activated clotting time (ACT) in patients with AN69ST and PS membranes. We also measured the adsorption of NM in three types of CRRT membranes using an experimental model...

BACKGROUND: Death rates after surgery are increasingly analysed for clinical audit and quality assessment. Many studies commonly provide information only on deaths that occur during hospital stay, known as in-hospital death rates. By using hospital data set linked to death certificate registry, we recorded in- and out-hospital deaths within 30 and 60 post-operative days. METHODS: The study included all consecutive surgical procedures (denominator) under general or locoregional anaesthesia in adult patients admitted for elective or non-elective inpatient surgery...

In this month's Magnet® Perspectives column, Barbara Richardson, MSN, RN-BC, CCRN, clinical nurse specialist at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, examines the ways in which a robust transitional care program improves community health, reduces readmissions and emergency department visits, and provides valuable social support for even the most complex patients. Richardson shares critical factors that impacted the program's success, including a Magnet® environment of innovation, a visionary hospital leadership team, strong community alliances, and collaborative solutions to previously intractable problems...

The objective is to develop a model based on risk stratification to predict delirium among adult critically ill patients and whether early intervention could be provided for high-risk patients, which could reduce the incidence of delirium.We designed a prospective, observational, single-center study. We examined 11 factors, including age, APACHE-II score, coma, emergency operation, mechanical ventilation (MV), multiple trauma, metabolic acidosis, history of hypertension, delirium and dementia, and application of Dexmedetomidine Hydrochloride...

PURPOSE: To examine the effect of a system of expedited review of critically ill patients in the Emergency Department (ED) on ED length of stay (LOS) and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Retrospective cohort study at a tertiary hospital comparing two 12-month periods before and after implementation of a 'Code ICU' system of expedited review of critically ill patients in the ED. All adult ED to ICU admissions were included. Separate analyses were performed for patients intubated prior to ICU admission...

AIM: To examine how first time mothers in Nova Scotia (NS) identified and prioritized their own postpartum needs and where they went for information and support, inclusive of informal or formal programs and services, social media, family and friends. BACKGROUND: The early postpartum period is an exciting, yet stressful life experience for first time mothers. Mothers have often turned to families, friends and health care professionals for support and information; however, these social networks look differently today due to changes in institutional policies and postpartum health care practices, as well as the emergence of online resources and networks...

The Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic, which began in West Africa in December 2013, claimed more than 11,000 lives, with more than 4,800 of these deaths occurring in Liberia. The epidemic had an additional effect of paralyzing the health-care systems in affected countries, which led to even greater mortality and morbidity. Little is known about the impact that the epidemic had on the provision of basic health care. During the period from March to May 2015, we undertook a nationwide, community-based survey to learn more about health-care access during the EVD epidemic in Liberia...

INTRODUCTION: Integrating oral health care and primary care is a priority for improving population health. Primary care physicians (PCP) are filling expanded roles within oral health care to secure strong overall health for their patients. METHODS: This comparative case study examines the roles of PCPs at 5 federally qualified health centers that have integrated oral health care and primary care. Administrative data were obtained directly from the Health Resources and Services Administration...

BACKGROUND: Computed tomography of the head (HCT) is a widely used diagnostic tool, especially for emergency and trauma patients. However, the diagnostic yield and outcomes of HCT for patients on medical intensive care units (MICUs) are largely unknown. METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated all head CTs from patients admitted to a single-center MICU during a 5-year period for CT indications, diagnostic yield, and therapeutic consequences. Uni- and multivariate analyses for the evaluation of risk factors for positive head CT were conducted...

Splenic artery aneurysm is the third most common type of intra-abdominal aneurysm, with a prevalence rate of 0.01% to 10.4% in the general population. Splenic artery aneurysm is usually asymptomatic and is typically detected by chance and does not require surgical management; however, if rupture occurs, although rare, the patient's situation can become critical. We report our experience with a man who presented with left flank and left shoulder pain. His symptoms were caused by multiple hematomas confined to the spleen, but 2 days after admission, he developed delayed hemoperitoneum and required surgical management...

In (helicopter) emergency medical services, (H)EMS, the prehospital detection of intracranial hematomas should improve patient care and the triage to specialized neurosurgical hospitals. Recently, noninvasive detection of intracranial hematomas became possible by applying transcranial near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Herein, second-generation devices are currently available, for example, the Infrascanner 2000 (Infrascan), that appear suited also for prehospital (H)EMS applications. Since (H)EMS operations are time-critical, we studied the Infrascanner 2000 as a "first-time-right" monitor in healthy volunteers (n = 17, hospital employees, no neurologic history)...