Respiratory failure is one of the leading admission diagnoses on the critical care unit, and the journals have reflected this over the past few months. An understanding of the aetiology of pulmonary sepsis is important but your choice of ventilator gas humidification system is not. There are prophecies of more pandemics, but panic is futile because survival is all down to your genes.

End-of-life care decision making carries paramount importance due to the advancements in medical sciences. Since medical science has evolved over the time and now has a potentiality to reshape the circumstances during death and in turn prolong lives, various ethical issues surround end-of-life care. The purpose of this narrative review is to discuss issues such as autonomous decision making, im...

s from the First Annual Baylor Scott and White Surgery Research Day 318 was that maternal preeclampsia independently increases necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) risk in newborns. Th e database of all births at our institution from 2008 to 2011 (n = 9993) was retrospectively reviewed after institutional review board approval. Multiple mother and baby variables, including maternal age, race, parity...

BACKGROUND The medical futility rationale asserts that physicians need not offer their patients therapies that have zero or close to zero probability of success. The rationale is controversial, but it is used in practice. OBJECTIVE To examine the attitudes of patients with advanced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) toward the medical futility rationale as it might apply to their medic...

BACKGROUND The Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS) is a collection of monographs written by pharmaceutical companies and published by the Canadian Pharmacists Association. The CPS is widely available and is consulted frequently by Canadian physicians. We examined overdose management advice contained in the CPS to see whether it reflects current standards. METHODS We restricted...

• Respect the dignity of both patient and caregivers. • Be sensitive to and respectful of the patient’s and family’s wishes. • Use the most appropriate measures that are consistent with the choices of the patient or the patient’s legal surrogate. • Ensure alleviation of pain and management of other physical symptoms. • Recognize, assess, and address psychological, social, and spiritual problems...