Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] It’s 4 in the morning; I am somewhere between Riga and Stockholm. The moon is full and bright and rippling across the black, Baltic Sea. This warm, June darkness is cut like onyx by deep vibrations of a cruise ship and its collections of giggling Swedes; they karaoke ‘Spaceman’ by [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] Reminder: Help me with my master’s thesis! Please complete a learning module, and fill out this exceptionally brief survey! Perhaps the landmark trial elaborating an evolving cardiac dysfunction during the spontaneous breathing trial [SBT] is that of Lemaire and colleagues – published in 1988 [1]. One particularly memorable patient of [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet …” -Kipling Last year, I began adding physiology modules to heart-lung.org as a part of a Master’s Degree I am undertaking at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The goal of these modules has been to encourage [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] Of the countless things taught to me by Dr. Chitkara at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System, one that sticks is the difference between density-dependent and viscosity-dependent airflow. He often used the chronic bronchitic suffering through the viscous, humid New York City summers as a teaching example. The importance [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] Read part 1 here Fluids and the Glycocaylx Critically-ill patients all likely have endothelial dysfunction to some degree. This perturbation in microvascular physiology may be underpinned by abnormal glycocalyx structure and function. Sepsis, trauma, surgery and ischemic insults are all known to disrupt the glycocalyx which will increase vascular fluid capacitance. [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “To every (wo)man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science.” -Richard Feynman A rich, frosty wind etherizes my face; this cool gust rips through the medieval, labyrinthine passageways of Old Stockholm like frayed edges of [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] PulmCCM is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Society of Critical Care Medicine or the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. Click here to read the Surviving Sepsis Guidelines. “I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] Hemodynamic assessment, by any means, demands a shrewd familiarity with mechanical heart-lung interaction. The two ventricles communicate in series and in parallel; each ventricle’s pressure-volume characteristics and loading conditions pulsate between systole and diastole. And around the heart and pericardium lies the respiratory pump – the lungs within the thorax [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “New York is cold, but I like where I’m living … There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.” -Leonard Cohen It’s the end of December; we collectively reflect on the year that was and try to find our footing for the next. In the short winter days of 2016, it [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] When interpreting hemodynamic studies of drugs which – potentially – alter the resistance of the pulmonary vascular tree, we often turn to the calculated pulmonary vascular resistance [cPVR] as our guide. For instance, a vasopressor determined to increase the cPVR is wholly avoided in a patient with pulmonary arterial hypertension. We [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three …” -Joseph Heller In my younger days, parked on a bench overlooking Stanley Park, I sought [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “I want to be your medicine, I want to feed the sparrow in your heart …” -Kristian Matsson Case A 39 year old woman is admitted to the intensive care unit for hypotension, anuria and altered mentation despite 3 litres of intravenous lactated ringers infusion. She is febrile and found to [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” -Oscar Wilde The Case A 76 year old woman without known medical comorbidity is ambulating along 7th avenue, rounding the corner where St. Vincent’s Hospital once operated. It is an exceptionally humid August afternoon and she has not [… read more]
By Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where, and we don’t know where …” -Paul Simon The Case A 42 year old man is admitted with fever, right upper-quadrant pain and jaundice. Over the last few hours he has become progressively confused and hypotensive. He has normal renal [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” -Thoreau The Case A 56 year old man with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy [LVEF 40% and mitral regurgitation] is admitted with severe sepsis due to appendicitis. One month prior to admission, his outpatient cardiologist saw him and noted a dry weight of 88 kg. [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “Truth is like the sun, its value wholly depends upon our being at a correct distance away from it.” -Hjalmar Söderberg The evening is invigorating; the Stockholm Marathon has been run and cobblestoned cafés, concealed within winding, narrowed side-streets are in the throes of summer’s end. I take a coffee and [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “We do not live in a privileged frame of reference.” -Carl Sagan It is a common human experience to feel that one is the exception. Indeed, the study of cosmology has demoted our – once privileged – place in the cosmos. We have fallen from the center of the universe to [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] A 23 year old woman is admitted with severe abdominal pain following 5 days of profound non-bloody diarrhea and 72 hours of recalcitrant non-bloody emesis. She has lost 7 pounds in this time frame and has been unable to maintain oral hydration. Her eyes are sunken and her vital signs are [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “Let the wild rumpus start!” -Maurice Sendak Many of you are preparing for the Critical Care Medicine Board Examination; thank you to those who have downloaded my free review notes. I often receive a question or two about the exam and how germane my notes were, in retrospect. This is a [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny [@heart_lung] “It is important to realize that guidelines cannot always account for individual variation among patients. They are not intended to supplant physician judgement with respect to particular patients or special clinical situations.” -IDSA/ATS Guidelines 2016 A 73 year old man is admitted from a nursing home for an NSTEMI and is [… read more]
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