Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustrations by Carla M Canepa MD [@_carlemd_] “The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.” ― Virginia Woolf Case A 28 year old woman with known severe mitral stenosis from rheumatic heart disease presents with acute onset shortness of breath. Her acute dyspnea began while [… read more]
In an unusual turn, the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) is advising against implementation of the one-hour sepsis bundle originally advocated in Spring 2018 by committee members of its Surviving Sepsis Campaign. SCCM and American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) issued a joint statement in which they acknowledged “concerns expressed about the recently released Surviving [… read more]
For acutely ill patients, oxygen saturation should not exceed 96%, an international panel recommended. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians was brought together by The BMJ as part of the Rapid Recommendation initiative to focus on the most effective approach to oxygen therapy for patients with acute medical illness. The team used findings from an April 2018 systematic [… read more]
Best of 2018: Prone positioning for severe ARDS advised by major societies 2018 Update to Surviving Sepsis Guidelines: Cue Backlash Management of Ground Glass and Subsolid Pulmonary Nodules: Review Vasopressors and Inotropes for Shock Syndromes: Review Prophylactic Precedex prevented delirium in ICU patients Corticosteroids do help [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] Remarkably, non-invasive cardiology did not begin with ultrasound but rather as investigations into systolic time [1]. Indeed, studies on the duration of systole began in 1875 with Garrod who showed that the left ventricular ejection time [LVET] – the time that the aortic valve is open and ejecting blood – varies [… read more]
More than 60% of patients receiving mechanical ventilation have continued to receive daily chest x-rays since the publication of guidelines recommending against the practice. The findings came from a database review of hundreds of thousands of patients and were published in JAMA Network Open. The American College of Radiology once recommended daily chest films in [… read more]
Obese people are significantly more likely to survive severe illness due to infections, as compared to people with normal weights, according to analyses of three large data sets presented at a European conference. Among more than 1.5 million hospitalizations for pneumonia in the U.S. between 2013-2014, obese patients (BMI > 30) were 29% more likely [… read more]
Another large study suggests that there is no benefit to early initiation of renal replacement therapy (RRT) in patients with severe sepsis with septic shock and acute kidney injury (AKI). And many patients whose renal replacement was delayed recovered sufficient kidney function to avoid dialysis entirely. Because AKI is associated with worse outcomes in critical [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustrations by Carla M Canepa MD [@_carlemd_] “I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.” -Schopenhauer The last few decades have infamously boasted numerous failed therapies for sepsis and septic shock. Because sepsis represents an explosive and chaotic cacophony of pro and anti-inflammatory mediators – treatments which [… read more]
Severe hyponatremia (often defined as a serum sodium < 120 mEq/L) occurs most often in people with pituitary or lung tumors, those taking antipsychotic or other neuroleptic drugs, heavy beer drinkers, or the elderly. Usually sodium levels decline slowly over weeks or months prior to detection, allowing time for the brain to compensate, with only [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] In a recent and excellent open-access review, Gattinoni, Quintel and Marini ask which is worse, volutrauma or atelectrauma [1]? This concise review is an absolute must-read and forms the fabric from which this short article assembles. Last spring – in Montreal – I was asked a few questions about volutrauma [… read more]
Oral Anticoagulants in the ICU: A summary of the evidence for efficacy in atrial fibrillation, venous thromboembolism, and unique clinical cases Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) are recommended as the preferred treatment for venous thromboembolism (VTE) and as a first-line option for stroke prevention in nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF), but warfarin may be preferred in certain [… read more]
Well-done bag-mask ventilation can produce adequate gas exchange for the vast majority of cardiac arrest patients, but does not provide a secure airway and is physically taxing. Patients in cardiac arrest undergoing CPR tend to immediately receive bag-mask ventilation, which is often interrupted to perform endotracheal intubation. To facilitate intubation, chest compressions may also be [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustrations by Carla M Canepa MD [@_carlemd_] “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” -Mark Twain Case An 89 year old man with a 100 pack-year smoking history is admitted with weakness and inability to take anything by mouth. He was discharged 2 months prior after a treatment [… read more]
Neither typical antipsychotics (haloperidol) or newer antipsychotics (ziprasidone) were effective in treating delirium in critically ill patients, in a major randomized trial. The results call into question widely used pharmacologic treatments for ICU delirium. Authors enrolled 1,183 adult patients at medical or surgical ICUs at 16 U.S. medical centers who developed delirium while critically ill [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “Once had a love and it was a gas …” -Blondie Case A 56 year old professor returns from a hiking trip in the ‘Four Corners’ area of New Mexico. She was previously well and decided to rent a secluded desert cabin whilst writing a novel on the ethical obligations [… read more]
A new meta-analysis adds to the evidence that liberal use of supplemental oxygen may be harmful in acutely ill, hospitalized patients. Authors performed a meta-analysis of 25 randomized trials of acutely ill patients (total n ~ 16,000) treated with strategies of either “low” or “high” supplemental oxygenation. Although the cutoffs varied between studies, patients receiving [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustrations by Carla M Canepa MD [@_carlemd_] “My reputation’s never been worse, so …” -Taylor Swift Case A 54 year old woman with lupus nephritis – treated with mycophenolate mofetil and prednisone – is admitted with pancytopenia and worsening confusion. She was recently discharged after receiving levofloxacin and clindamycin [… read more]
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is an accepted salvage therapy for severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) after conventional mechanical ventilation with low tidal volumes, neuromuscular blockade and prone positioning have failed. ECMO has been proposed as the ultimate lung protection strategy for ARDS, because it bypasses the lungs entirely. So why shouldn’t it be first-line [… read more]
Brain damage with severe cognitive and functional impairment are common after cardiac arrest, but far from universal. Even after thorough testing, most comatose patients receive an indeterminate neurologic prognosis post-arrest. Physicians faced with this uncertainty have a difficult task in counseling family members trying to make decisions to maximize their loved one’s chances for recovery [… read more]
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