How doctors actually (do not) involve families in decisions to continue or discontinue life-sustaining treatment in neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Intensive care doctors have to find the right balance between sharing crucial decisions with families of patients on the one hand and not overburdening them on the other hand. This requires a tailored approach instead of a model based approach. AIM: To explore how doctors involve families in the decision-making process regarding life-sustaining treatment on the neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care. DESIGN: Exploratory inductive thematic analysis of 101 audio-recorded conversations. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: One hundred four family members (61% female, 39% male) and 71 doctors (60% female, 40% male) of 36 patients (53% female, 47% male) from the neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care of a large university medical center participated. RESULTS: We identified eight relevant and distinct communicative behaviors. Doctors' sequential communicative behaviors either reflected consistent approaches-a shared approach or a physician-driven approach-or reflected vacillating between both approaches. Doctors more often displayed a physician-driven or a vacillating approach than a shared approach, especially in the adult intensive care. Doctors did not verify whether their chosen approach matched the families' decision-making preferences. CONCLUSIONS: Even though tailoring doctors' communication to families' preferences is advocated, it does not seem to be integrated into actual practice. To allow for true tailoring, doctors' awareness regarding the impact of their communicative behaviors is key. Educational initiatives should focus especially on improving doctors' skills in tactfully exploring families' decision-making preferences and in mutually sharing knowledge, values, and treatment preferences.

Prevalence of autoimmune pancreatitis and other benign disorders in pancreatoduodenectomy for presumed malignancy of the pancreatic head.

BACKGROUND: Occasionally patients undergoing resection for presumed malignancy of the pancreatic head are diagnosed postoperatively with benign disease. Autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is a rare disease that mimics pancreatic cancer. We aimed to determine the prevalence of benign disease and AIP in patients who underwent pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) over a 9-year period, and to explore if and how surgery could have been avoided. METHODS: All patients undergoing PD between 2000 and 2009 in a tertiary referral centre were analyzed retrospectively. In cancer-negative cases, postoperative diagnosis was reassessed. Preoperative index of suspicion of malignancy was scored as non-specific, suggestive, or high. In AIP patients, diagnostic criteria systems were checked. RESULTS: A total of 274 PDs were performed for presumed malignancy. The prevalence of benign disease was 8.4 %, overall prevalence of AIP was 2.6 %. Based on preoperative index of suspicion of malignancy, surgery could have been avoided in 3 non-AIP patients. All AIP patients had sufficient index to justify surgery. If diagnostic criteria would have been checked; however, surgery could have been avoided in one to five AIP patients. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of benign disease in patients who underwent PD for presumed malignancy was 8.4 %, nearly one-third attributable to AIP. Although misdiagnosis of AIP as carcinoma is a problem of limited quantitative importance, every effort to establish the correct diagnosis should be undertaken considering the major therapeutic consequences. IgG4 measurement and systematic use of diagnostic criteria systems are recommended for every candidate patient for PD when there is no histological proof of malignancy.

Potential value of serum total IgE for differentiation between autoimmune pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.

Autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is associated with a marked elevation of serum total IgG4 . Although there is evidence of autoimmunity in AIP, there are also signs of an allergic nature of its pathogenesis. Therefore, we determined both IgE and IgG4 in 13 patients with AIP, in 12 patients with pancreatic carcinoma and in 14 patients with atopic allergy and investigated the relationship between IgE and IgG4 . Total IgG4 was determined by automated nephelometry and total IgE by automated enzyme fluoroimmunoassay. Both total IgE and total IgG4 levels in patients with AIP were significantly higher than those in patients with pancreatic carcinoma (P = 0.0004 and P = 0.015, respectively). There was a significant correlation between the total IgE and total IgG4 levels in patients with AIP and patients with atopic allergy (r(s) =0.82, P=0.0006 and r(s) =0.88, P < 0.0001, respectively). The IgE/ IgG4 ratio in sera from patients with atopic allergy was significantly different (P = 0.0012) from this ratio in sera from patients with AIP. These results suggest that analysis of total IgE in serum might be useful in the differentiation between autoimmune pancreatitis and pancreatic carcinoma.

Spontaneous breathing during high-frequency oscillatory ventilation improves regional lung characteristics in experimental lung injury.

BACKGROUND: Maintenance of spontaneous breathing is advocated in mechanical ventilation. This study evaluates the effect of spontaneous breathing on regional lung characteristics during high-frequency oscillatory (HFO) ventilation in an animal model of mild lung injury. METHODS: Lung injury was induced by lavage with normal saline in eight pigs (weight range 47-64 kg). HFO ventilation was applied, in runs of 30 min on paralyzed animals or on spontaneous breathing animals with a continuous fresh gas flow (CF) or a custom-made demand flow (DF) system. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) was used to assess lung aeration and ventilation and the occurrence of hyperinflation. RESULTS: End expiratory lung volume (EELV) decreased in all different HFO modalities. HFO, with spontaneous breathing maintained, showed preservation in lung volume in the dependent lung regions compared with paralyzed conditions. Comparing DF with paralyzed conditions, the center of ventilation was located at 50% and 51% (median, left and right lung) from anterior to posterior and at 45% and 46% respectively, P<0.05. Polynomial coefficients using a continuous flow were -0.02 (range -0.35 to 0.32) and -0.01 (-0.17 to 0.23) for CF and DF, respectively, P=0.01. CONCLUSIONS: This animal study demonstrates that spontaneous breathing during HFO ventilation preserves lung volume, and when combined with DF, improves ventilation of the dependent lung areas. No significant hyperinflation occurred on account of spontaneous breathing. These results underline the importance of maintaining spontaneous breathing during HFO ventilation and support efforts to optimize HFO ventilators to facilitate patients' spontaneous breathing.

Rituximab for the treatment of glomerulonephritis in hepatitis C associated cryoglobulinaemia.

Mixed-type cryoglobulins are strongly associated with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and may lead to vasculitis with renal involvement. The treatment of this condition is antiviral therapy for HCV, but this may be ineffective or not tolerated because of side effects. Alternative strategies such as immunosuppressive drugs and plasmapheresis are of limited use, especially in patients after liver transplantation (LTx). We describe an LTx patient with cryoglobulinaemia-associated glomerulonephritis, who was treated successfully with the B cell depleting monoclonal antibody rituximab.

[Diagnostic image (375). A boy with a diffuse opacity of the left hemithorax]. / Diagnose in beeld (375). Een jongen met sluiering van de linker hemithorax.

A 3-year-old boy with a diffuse opacity of the left hemithorax was suffering from plastic bronchitis. A cast mainly consisting of eosinophils was removed from the left bronchial tree.