Recent extensive development of thoracic surgery meets the need to treat elderly patients with a wide variety of pathophysiologic alterations, even if they require continuous medical assistance and high technologic support. Methods in providing such care are still limited by imprecision in evaluation of results; in this setting, a severity of disease classification system is essential to estima...

Background: Tools to measure quality are becoming widespread and focus either on the outcomes of care or the processes of care. For intensive care units (ICUs), the main focus on research on outcome measurement has been on the development of mortality prediction models. Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of three general severity-of-illness scores, Acute Physiology a...

INTRODUCTION Acute generalised peritonitis coming forth due to underlying intestinal perforation is a critical & life-threatening medical condition. It is a common surgical emergency most of the times across the world. Misleading data on crude morbidity and mortality due to the condition usually contaminates substantially the very purpose of medical audit. Thus, early prognostic evaluation is n...

BACKGROUND Risk adjustment and mortality prediction in studies of critical care are usually performed using acuity of illness scores, such as Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II), which emphasize physiological derangement. Common risk adjustment systems used in administrative datasets, like the Charlson index, are entirely based on the presence of co-morbid illnesses. T...

conclusions central nervous system depressant was an important risk factor for vap among poisoned patients. hypoventilation due to cns depression can lead to vap. the apache ii and length of hospital stay were shown as independent predictors of vap and mortality among these patients. results the mean age of the patients was 33.9 ± 14.3 years. the probable vap incidence and mortality were 22% an...

BACKGROUND Timely risk stratification is the key strategy to improve prognosis of patients with sepsis. Previous study has proposed to develop a powerful risk assessment rule by the combination of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) score and plasma soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR). That reaffirmation of suPAR as a prognostic marker in Chinese p...

Reference 1. Morhenthaler NG, Struck J, Christ-Cain M, Bergmann A, Müller B: Pro-atrial natriuretic peptide is a prognostic marker in sepsis, similar to the APACHE II score: an observational study. Critical Care 2005, 9:R37-R45 Correction Correction: Pro-atrial natriuretic peptide is a prognostic marker in sepsis, similar to the APACHE II score: an observational study. Nils G Morgenthaler1, Joa...

BACKGROUND Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) contributes to high mortality, prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) stay and increased costs of health care. Reports of early predictors of death in patients with VAP are rare. Our study was designed to determine early predictors of poor outcome in patients with VAP. METHODS A total 838 patients with nosocomial lower respiratory tract infection ...

BACKGROUND Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is characterized by a biochemical triad of hyperglycemia, acidosis, and ketonemia. This condition is life-threatening despite improvements in diabetic care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical and biochemical prognostic markers of DKA. We assessed correlations in prognostic markers with DKA-associated morbidity and mortality. METHODS T...