Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions may lead to unintentional discontinuation of long-standing, evidence-based drug therapies. In the August issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Bell et al conducted a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, to investigate whether ICU or hospital admissions were associated with a greater risk for inadvertent discontinuation of long-term medications. A [...]

• 3 Comments

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines recommend initiating broad-spectrum antibiotics within one hour to treat severe sepsis or septic shock. In September’s Critical Care Medicine, Puskarich et al studied the association between time to initial antibiotic administration and in-hospital mortality rates for septic patients treated with the quantitative resuscitation protocol. The study design was a preplanned [...]

• 3 Comments

Ultrasound use in the intensive care unit (ICU) has become increasingly prevalent, especially as more intensivists gain valuable training and experience in this cost-effective imaging modality. In this month’s issue of Intensive Care Medicine, Xirouchaki et al compared the diagnostic performance of lung ultrasound and bedside chest radiography (CXR) for the detection of four pathologic [...]

• 0 Comments

Vasopressin is recommended for cardiac arrest according to current American Heart Association guidelines. In a pre-released article in Resuscitation, Mentzelopoulos et al performed a meta-analysis to determine whether the cumulative evidence supports or refutes outcomes benefits for vasopressin when used for adult cardiac arrest. After a limited search involving PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane registry, [...]

• 2 Comments

In an online article of The New England Journal of Medicine, Casaer et al present data from a prospective, randomized, controlled, parallel-group, multicenter trial conducted in Belgium. The Early Parenteral Nutrition Completing Enteral Nutrition in Adult Critically Ill Patients (EPaNIC) investigators sought to assess outcomes between patients treated with parenteral nutrition (PN) within 2 days [...]

• 3 Comments