Critical Care News and Research

RSS

Boys more likely to grow out of asthma

According to researchers in the U.S. boys are more likely than girls to grow out of childhood asthma when they reach their teenage years.

19 Aug 2008

Virginia Hospital Center to launch $14 million new hospital information system

Virginia Hospital Center will launch a $14 million new Hospital Information System (HIS) in 2009 that will utilize advanced information technologies (IT) to create efficiencies and orchestrate clinical best practices. The Hospital signed an agreement with Siemens Medical Solutions and will implement its powerful workflow-engineered health information solution, Soarian.

12 Aug 2008

Immune system protein accurate predictor of survival in pediatric septic shock

About 4,000 children in the United States die every year from uncontrolled infections of the body known as septic shock, and researchers are pushing the boundaries of molecular science to find new therapies that can stem the condition. But a simple measure of an immune system protein within 24 hours of being admitted to the hospital for septic shock can predict survival in children, yielding a powerful tool for diagnostics and clinical trials of new septic shock therapies, according to a research team led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in the Aug. 1 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

4 Aug 2008

Current tuberculosis treatment regimens need to updated

The standard regimens to treat tuberculosis (TB) are inadequate in countries with high rates of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. In countries with high rates of MDR-TB, patients are nearly twice as likely to fail their initial treatment than those in countries with low rates, according to a new analysis of World Health Organization (WHO) data. This finding suggests strongly that current TB treatment regimens need to updated and revised to address the shifting landscape of public health in the face of MDR-TB.

3 Aug 2008

Study reveals cost of stabbings to British health service

Injuries caused by gun and knife crime are costing Britain's National Health Service in excess of £3million a year, new research reveals.

From The University of Manchester 31 Jul 2008

Heart attack not a death sentence

Survivors of cardiac arrest who received intensive care can expect long-term quality of life at reasonable expense to the health care system.

17 Jul 2008

Low-sodium advice for asthmatics should be taken with a pinch of salt

Following a low-sodium diet does not appear to have any appreciable impact on asthma control, according to new research.

15 Jul 2008

Allergy to road traffic

Allergic diseases appear more often in children who grow up near busy roads. This is the result of a study of several thousand children, now published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

14 Jul 2008

Predicting tuberculosis outbreaks based on the first 2 cases

Outbreaks of tuberculosis (TB) may be able to be identified by looking at certain characteristics of the first two patients, according to new research. If the first two patients are diagnosed within three months of each other, live in urban areas, and if one or both are of sub-Saharan African origin, there is a 56 percent chance that the two cases will lead to a large outbreak of TB, whereas if the patients exhibit none of those characteristics, the odds are just one percent.

1 Jul 2008

Curbing kids' risk-taking behavior

Educating kids and their parents about the importance of wearing a helmet when riding a bike, and buckling up and riding in the back seat of the car, could help to cut down the more than 30 million injury-related emergency room visits that occur each year in the United States.

1 Jul 2008

Hydrogen sulfide significantly improves survival after extreme blood loss

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the administration of minute amounts of inhaled or intravenous hydrogen sulfide, or H2S - the molecule that gives rotten eggs their sulfurous stench - significantly improves survival from extreme blood loss in rats.

1 Jul 2008

Penn researchers propose major changes to informed consent for transplantation

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine physicians and bioethicists are calling for a new, more standardized way for patients in need of organ transplants to be informed of the risks they face. If adopted, their policy recommendations could promote greater equity in how organs are allocated while restricting patients' abilities to "cherry-pick" the best organs.

26 Jun 2008

Harbor House to assist transplant and critical care patients, families

A dream of local heart transplant patients and volunteers is coming true much earlier than expected thanks to a generous gift provided by a local nonprofit organization.

25 Jun 2008

Identity tags can cause life saving medical equipment to malfunction

Dutch scientists are suggesting that radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs) could cause critical care medical equipment to malfunction.

25 Jun 2008

RFID applications in health care may affect medical equipment

The use of radio frequency identification devices appears to have the potential to cause critical care medical equipment to malfunction, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

24 Jun 2008

Study shows many Australian heart patients die needlessly

An extensive study of heart attack patients has found some patients in Australia are dying unnecessarily.

16 Jun 2008

Traffic pollution linked to childhood allergies

New research from Germany has found a link between traffic pollution and childhood allergies.

16 Jun 2008

Oxygen-rich lifesaving efforts pose risk for respiratory infections

Each year, thousands of premature infants battle to breathe. Thanks to life-saving interventions developed in the past couple decades - steroids given to their mothers to stall pre-term labor, mechanical ventilation, air enriched with extra oxygen, and surfactant, a crucial wetting agent that makes breathing less work - most of these newborns survive with enough lung function to grow and go home.

11 Jun 2008

Overheating newborns can increase the risk of SIDS

New research at the University of Calgary shows that smoking while pregnant, as well as thermal stress, can lead to an increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Increased ambient temperature such as over-wrapping a baby at night time or increasing the room temperature can affect the baby's pattern of breathing

2 Jun 2008

US soldiers in high-tuberculosis areas face new epidemic: false positives

U.S. Army service members are increasingly deployed in regions of the world where tuberculosis (TB) is rampant, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military now faces a growing medical problem. But it is not TB itself that is on the rise-instead, the problem lies with the growing number of "pseudoepidemics," or clusters of false-positives for TB that are the result of universal testing with a notoriously inaccurate tuberculin skin test (TST) and inconsistent procedures for interpreting those tests in low-risk populations.

1 Jun 2008