STUDY OBJECTIVE Overweight patients seem to have a poorer outcome and a higher risk of complications during their stay in the ICU. We conducted a prospective study in order to examine the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mortality among these patients. DESIGN Prospective clinical study. SETTING A 24-bed medical ICU in a university-affiliated hospital. METHODS All patients ho...

Many health care systems include programs that allow patients in exceptional circumstances to access medical interventions of as yet unproven benefit. In this article we consider the ethical justifications for-and demands on-these special access programs (SAPs). SAPs have a compassionate basis: They give patients with limited options the opportunity to try interventions that are not yet approve...

BACKGROUND Physiology-based severity of illness scores are often used for risk adjustment in observational studies of intensive care unit (ICU) outcome. However, the complexity and time constraints of these scoring systems may limit their use in administrative databases. Comorbidity is a main determinant of ICU outcome, and comorbidity scores can be computed based on data from most administrati...

Results In this period, there were 608 admissions. The severity indices measured reached 48.5 points for SAPS II, and APACHE II 25.6 corresponding to a mortality rate of 43.8% and 56.9%, respectively. There were in total 170 deaths (27.9%). Of these, the majority were male (104 vs 66; 61% vs 39%) and the average age was 75.4 years and ranged between 37-97 years. The most prevalent age range was...

AIM OF DATABASE The aim of this database is to improve the quality of care in Danish intensive care units (ICUs) by monitoring key domains of intensive care and to compare these with predefined standards. STUDY POPULATION The Danish Intensive Care Database (DID) was established in 2007 and includes virtually all ICU admissions in Denmark since 2005. The DID obtains data from the Danish Nation...

BACKGROUND While elevated levels of estradiol were predictive of mortality in critically ill surgical and trauma patients, their ability to predict outcome in nonsurgical patients has not been studied. We aimed to study the determinants of gonadotropin levels in acutely ill postmenopausal women with nonsurgical disease and the impact of changes in the gonadal axis on the outcome of these patien...

Sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) that lead to an increase in productivity are central to the acceleration of economic growth; this will alleviate poverty and help to overcome the recurrent food shortages that affect millions of households in Africa. However, the adoption rates of SAPs remain below expected levels. This paper analyzes the factors that facilitate or impede the probabilit...

BACKGROUND Several studies have found that standard risk scores inaccurately reflect risk in TAVI cohorts. The assessment of mortality risk upon post-interventional ICU admission is important to optimizing clinical management. This study sought to determine outcomes and factors affecting mortality in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) after transcatheter aortic valve implantatio...

This article briefly describes the general aspects and cross-linking polymerization of superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) and superabsorbent polymer composites (SAPCs). Research and development of SAPs has become very active after the Northern Region Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture invented the first SAP, used as a soil conditioner. Based on the advancements in organic/ino...