Critical care science最新文献

Background: Critically ill patients are at increased risk of health care-associated infections due to various devices (central line-associated bloodstream infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, and ventilator-associated pneumonia), which pose a significant threat to this population. Among several strategies, daily bathing with chlorhexidine digluconate, a water-soluble antiseptic, has been studied as an intervention to decrease the incidence of health care-associated infections in the intensive care unit; however, its ability to reduce all health care-associated infections due to various devices is unclear. We designed the Daily Chlorhexidine Bath for Health Care Associated Infection Prevention (CLEAN-IT) trial to assess whether daily chlorhexidine digluconate bathing reduces the incidence of health care-associated infections in critically ill patients compared with soap and water bathing.

Methods: The CLEAN-IT trial is a multicenter, open-label, cluster randomized crossover clinical trial. All adult patients admitted to the participating intensive care units will be included in the trial. Each cluster (intensive care unit) will be randomized to perform either initial chlorhexidine digluconate bathing or soap and water bathing with crossover for a period of 3 to 6 months, depending on the time of each center's entrance to the study, with a 1-month washout period between chlorhexidine digluconate bathing and soap and water bathing transitions. The primary outcome is the incidence of health care-associated infections due to devices. The secondary outcomes are the incidence of each specific health care-associated infection, rates of microbiological cultures positive for multidrug-resistant pathogens, antibiotic use, intensive care unit and hospital length of stay, and intensive care unit and hospital mortality.

Conclusion: The CLEAN-IT trial will be used to study feasible and affordable interventions that might reduce the health care-associated infection burden in critically ill patients.

Objective: To address the current practice of liberating patients from invasive mechanical ventilation in pediatric intensive care units, with a focus on the use of standardized protocols, criteria, parameters, and indications for noninvasive respiratory support postextubation.

Methods: Electronic research was carried out from November 2021 to May 2022 in Ibero-American pediatric intensive care units. Physicians and respiratory therapists participated, with a single representative for each pediatric intensive care unit included. There were no interventions.

Results: The response rate was 48.9% (138/282), representing 10 Ibero-American countries. Written invasive mechanical ventilation liberation protocols were available in only 34.1% (47/138) of the pediatric intensive care units, and their use was associated with the presence of respiratory therapists (OR 3.85; 95%CI 1.79 - 8.33; p = 0.0008). The most common method of liberation involved a gradual reduction in ventilatory support plus a spontaneous breathing trial (47.1%). The mean spontaneous breathing trial duration was 60 - 120 minutes in 64.8% of the responses. The presence of a respiratory therapist in the pediatric intensive care unit was the only variable associated with the use of a spontaneous breathing trial as the primary method of liberation from invasive mechanical ventilation (OR 5.1; 95%CI 2.1 - 12.5). Noninvasive respiratory support protocols were not frequently used postextubation (40.4%). Nearly half of the respondents (43.5%) reported a preference for using bilevel positive airway pressure as the mode of noninvasive ventilation postextubation.

Conclusion: A high proportion of Ibero-American pediatric intensive care units lack liberation protocols. Our study highlights substantial variability in extubation readiness practices, underscoring the need for standardization in this process. However, the presence of a respiratory therapist was associated with increased adherence to guidelines.

The issue of withrawing and withholding life-sustaining interventions is an important source of controversy among healthcare professionals caring for patients with serious illnesses. Misguided decisions, both in terms of the introduction/maintenance and the withdrawal/withholding of these measures, represent a source of avoidable suffering for patients, their loved ones, and healthcare professionals. This document represents the position statement of the Bioethics Committee of the Brazilian Palliative Care Academy on this issue and establishes seven principles to guide, from a bioethical perspective, the approach to situations related to this topic in the context of palliative care in Brazil. The position statement establishes the equivalence between the withdrawal and withholding of life-sustaining interventions and the inadequacy related to initiating or maintaining such measures in contexts where they are in disagreement with the values and care goals defined together with patients and their families. Additionally, the position statement distinguishes strictly futile treatments from potentially inappropriate treatments and elucidates their critical implications for the appropriateness of the medical decision-making process in this context. Finally, we address the issue of conscientious objection and its limits, determine that the ethical commitment to the relief of suffering should not be influenced by the decision to employ or not employ life-sustaining interventions and warn against the use of language that causes patients/families to believe that only one of the available options related to the use or nonuse of these interventions will enable the relief of suffering.

In recent decades, several databases of critically ill patients have become available in both low-, middle-, and high-income countries from all continents. These databases are also rich sources of data for the surveillance of emerging diseases, intensive care unit performance evaluation and benchmarking, quality improvement projects and clinical research. The Epimed Monitor database is turning 15 years old in 2024 and has become one of the largest of these databases. In recent years, there has been rapid geographical expansion, an increase in the number of participating intensive care units and hospitals, and the addition of several new variables and scores, allowing a more complete characterization of patients to facilitate multicenter clinical studies. As of December 2023, the database was being used regularly for 23,852 beds in 1,723 intensive care units and 763 hospitals from ten countries, totaling more than 5.6 million admissions. In addition, critical care societies have adopted the system and its database to establish national registries and international collaborations. In the present review, we provide an updated description of the database; report experiences of its use in critical care for quality improvement initiatives, national registries and clinical research; and explore other potential future perspectives and developments.

Objective: To evaluate how ventilatory support, the duration of invasive ventilatory support use and lung mechanics are related to barotrauma development in patients who are severely infected with COVID-19 and who are admitted to the intensive care unit and develop pulmonary barotrauma.

Methods: Retrospective cohort study of patients who were severely infected with COVID-19 and who developed pulmonary barotrauma secondary to mechanical ventilation.

Results: This study included 60 patients with lung barotrauma who were divided into two groups: 37 with early barotrauma and 23 with late barotrauma. The early barotrauma group included more individuals who needed noninvasive ventilation (62.2% versus 26.1%, p = 0.01). The tidal volume/kg of predicted body weight on the day of barotrauma was measured, and 24 hours later, it was significantly greater in the late barotrauma group than in the early barotrauma group. During the day, barotrauma was accompanied by plateau pressure and driving pressure accompanied by tidal volume, which significantly increased in the late barotrauma group. According to the SAPS 3, patients in the early barotrauma group had more pulmonary thromboembolism and more severe illness. However, the intensive care unit mortality rates did not significantly differ between the two groups (66.7% for early barotrauma versus 76.9% for late barotrauma).

Conclusion: We investigated the effect of respiratory mechanics on barotrauma in patients with severe COVID-19 and found that 25% of patients were on nonprotective ventilation parameters when they developed barotrauma. However, 50% of patients were on protective ventilation parameters, suggesting that other nonventilatory factors may contribute to barotrauma.

Background: Ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis is a common condition among invasively ventilated patients in intensive care units, for which the best treatment strategy is currently unknown. We designed the VATICAN (Ventilator-Associated Tracheobronchitis Initiative to Conduct Antibiotic Evaluation) trial to assess whether a watchful waiting antibiotic treatment strategy is noninferior to routine antibiotic treatment for ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis regarding days free of mechanical ventilation.

Methods: VATICAN is a randomized, controlled, open-label, multicenter noninferiority trial. Patients with suspected ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis without evidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia or hemodynamic instability due to probable infection will be assigned to either a watchful waiting strategy, without antimicrobial administration for ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis and prescription of antimicrobials only in cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia, sepsis or septic shock, or another infectious diagnosis, or to a routine antimicrobial treatment strategy for seven days. The primary outcome will be mechanical ventilation-free days at 28 days, and a key secondary outcome will be ventilator-associated pneumonia-free survival. Through an intention-to-treat framework with a per-protocol sensitivity analysis, the primary outcome analysis will address noninferiority with a 20% margin, which translates to a 1.5 difference in ventilator-free days. Other analyses will follow a superiority analysis framework.

Conclusion: The VATICAN trial will follow all national and international ethical standards. We aim to publish the trial in a high-visibility general journal and present it at critical care and infectious disease conferences for dissemination. These results will likely be immediately applicable to the bedside upon trial completion and will provide information with a low risk of bias for guideline development.