BACKGROUND Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a life-saving therapy in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patients but is associated with complications and costs. Here, we validate various scores supposed to predict mortality and develop an optimized categorical model. METHODS In a derivation cohort, 108 ARDS patients (2010-2015) on veno-venous ECMO were retrospectively ana...

OBJECTIVES To study the MRI findings of the pancreatic duct in patients with acute pancreatitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 239 patients with acute pancreatitis and 125 controls were analyzed in this study. The severity of acute pancreatitis was graded using the MR severity index (MRSI) and the Acute Physiology And Chronic Healthy Evaluation II(APACHE II) scoring systems. The number of ...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine the impact of early enteral feeding on the outcome of critically ill medical patients. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected large multi-institutional ICU database. PATIENTS A total of 4,049 patients requiring mechanical ventilation for > 2 days. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Patients were classified according to whether or not they received e...

INTRODUCTION Measurement of biomarkers is a potential approach to early assessment and prediction of mortality in patients with sepsis. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic value of mid-regional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) levels in a cohort of medical intensive care patients and to compare it with other biomarkers and physiological scores. METHOD We evaluated blood ...

INTRODUCTION Use of colistin methanesulfonate (CMS) was abandoned in the 1970s because of excessive nephrotoxicity, but it has been reintroduced as a last-resort treatment for extensively drug-resistant infections caused by gram-negative bacteria (Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumonia). We conducted a retrospective cohort study to evaluate risk factors for new-on...

AIM To investigate the changes in the venoarterial carbon-dioxide gradient (V-a Pco(2)) and its prognostic value for survival of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. METHODS The study was conducted in General Hospital Holy Spirit from January 2004 to December 2007 and included 71 conveniently sampled adult patients (25 women and 46 men), who fulfilled the severe sepsis and septic sho...

BACKGROUND Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) caused by drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii is associated with high mortality in critically ill patients. We identified the prognostic factors of 30-day mortality in patients with VAP caused by drug-resistant A. baumannii and compared survival outcomes among multidrug-resistant (MDR), extensively drug-resistant (XDR) and pandrug-resistant (P...

OBJECTIVE This study assessed the effect of a handheld computer-based decision support system (DSS) on antibiotic use and patient outcomes in a critical care unit. DESIGN A DSS containing four types of evidence (patient microbiology reports, local antibiotic guidelines, unit-specific antibiotic susceptibility data for common bacterial pathogens, and a clinical pulmonary infection score calcul...

OBJECTIVE Measurement of extravascular lung water (EVLW) as a clinical tool for the assessment of pulmonary function has been found to be more appropriate than oxygenation parameters or radiographic techniques. In this study, we analyzed the prognostic value of EVLW in critically ill patients. DESIGN Retrospective analysis. SETTING Operative ICU of a university hospital. MEASUREMENTS AND ...