A Novel Research Method for Determining Sedative Exposure in Critically Ill Patients.

BACKGROUND: Although potent sedative and opioid drugs are some of the most commonly used medications to manage pain, anxiety, and discomfort in critically ill patients, conducting clinical trials where sedative and opioid medications are outcome variables within a longitudinal research design can be a methodological challenge. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this article is to provide in detail a conceptual discussion of the concept and analysis of sedative exposure: A novel research analysis method for aggregating sedative and opioid medication doses from disparate drug classes commonly administered to critically ill patients and used by our team in several clinical research studies. METHODS: Comparing the dose of each sedative and opioid administered to an individual patient (within a defined time interval) to all other patients in a research study receiving the same medications allows for ranking of dosages for each medication by quartiles. Rank values for all sedatives and opioids received can be summed to a single value resulting in a Sedation Intensity Score. In addition, a simple count of how many hours at least one dose of a sedative or opioid medication has been administered can determine sedation frequency. RESULTS: This method can allow for comparison of sedative exposure with medications from disparate drug classes and for analysis of estimates of change in medication use over time. DISCUSSION: This novel research analysis method can overcome the challenges and limitations of determining changes in sedative and opioid medication regimens in cohort and clinical trial study designs.

Exploring the scope of post-intensive care syndrome therapy and care: engagement of non-critical care providers and survivors in a second stakeholders meeting.

BACKGROUND: Increasing numbers of survivors of critical illness are at risk for physical, cognitive, and/or mental health impairments that may persist for months or years after hospital discharge. The post-intensive care syndrome framework encompassing these multidimensional morbidities was developed at the 2010 Society of Critical Care Medicine conference on improving long-term outcomes after critical illness for survivors and their families. OBJECTIVES: To report on engagement with non-critical care providers and survivors during the 2012 Society of Critical Care Medicine post-intensive care syndrome stakeholder conference. Task groups developed strategies and resources required for raising awareness and education, understanding and addressing barriers to clinical practice, and identifying research gaps and resources, aimed at improving patient and family outcomes. PARTICIPANTS: Representatives from 21 professional associations or health systems involved in the provision of both critical care and rehabilitation of ICU survivors in the United States and ICU survivors and family members. DESIGN: Stakeholder consensus meeting. Researchers presented summaries on morbidities for survivors and their families, whereas survivors presented their own experiences. MEETING OUTCOMES: Future steps were planned regarding 1) recognizing, preventing, and treating post-intensive care syndrome, 2) building strategies for institutional capacity to support and partner with survivors and families, and 3) understanding and addressing barriers to practice. There was recognition of the need for systematic and frequent assessment for post-intensive care syndrome across the continuum of care, including explicit "functional reconciliation" (assessing gaps between a patient's pre-ICU and current functional ability at all intra- and interinstitutional transitions of care). Future post-intensive care syndrome research topic areas were identified across the continuum of recovery: characterization of at-risk patients (including recognizing risk factors, mechanisms of injury, and optimal screening instruments), prevention and treatment interventions, and outcomes research for patients and families. CONCLUSIONS: Raising awareness of post-intensive care syndrome for the public and both critical care and non-critical care clinicians will inform a more coordinated approach to treatment and support during recovery after critical illness. Continued conceptual development and engagement with additional stakeholders is required.

Effects of patient-directed music intervention on anxiety and sedative exposure in critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilatory support: a randomized clinical trial.

IMPORTANCE: Alternatives to sedative medications, such as music, may alleviate the anxiety associated with ventilatory support. OBJECTIVE: To test whether listening to self-initiated patient-directed music (PDM) can reduce anxiety and sedative exposure during ventilatory support in critically ill patients. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS: Randomized clinical trial that enrolled 373 patients from 12 intensive care units (ICUs) at 5 hospitals in the Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, area receiving acute mechanical ventilatory support for respiratory failure between September 2006 and March 2011. Of the patients included in the study, 86% were white, 52% were female, and the mean (SD) age was 59 (14) years. The patients had a mean (SD) Acute Physiology, Age and Chronic Health Evaluation III score of 63 (21.6) and a mean (SD) of 5.7 (6.4) study days. INTERVENTIONS: Self-initiated PDM (n = 126) with preferred selections tailored by a music therapist whenever desired while receiving ventilatory support, self-initiated use of noise-canceling headphones (NCH; n = 122), or usual care (n = 125). MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Daily assessments of anxiety (on 100-mm visual analog scale) and 2 aggregate measures of sedative exposure (intensity and frequency). RESULTS: Patients in the PDM group listened to music for a mean (SD) of 79.8 (126) (median [range], 12 [0-796]) minutes/day. Patients in the NCH group wore the noise-abating headphones for a mean (SD) of 34.0 (89.6) (median [range], 0 [0-916]) minutes/day. The mixed-models analysis showed that at any time point, patients in the PDM group had an anxiety score that was 19.5 points lower (95% CI, -32.2 to -6.8) than patients in the usual care group (P = .003). By the fifth study day, anxiety was reduced by 36.5% in PDM patients. The treatment × time interaction showed that PDM significantly reduced both measures of sedative exposure. Compared with usual care, the PDM group had reduced sedation intensity by -0.18 (95% CI, -0.36 to -0.004) points/day (P = .05) and had reduced frequency by -0.21 (95% CI, -0.37 to -0.05) points/day (P = .01). The PDM group had reduced sedation frequency by -0.18 (95% CI, -0.36 to -0.004) points/day vs the NCH group (P = .04). By the fifth study day, the PDM patients received 2 fewer sedative doses (reduction of 38%) and had a reduction of 36% in sedation intensity. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Among ICU patients receiving acute ventilatory support for respiratory failure, PDM resulted in greater reduction in anxiety compared with usual care, but not compared with NCH. Concurrently, PDM resulted in greater reduction in sedation frequency compared with usual care or NCH, and greater reduction in sedation intensity compared with usual care, but not compared with NCH. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00440700.

Physicians' Clinical Behavior During Fluid Evaluation Encounters.

We sought to identify factors affecting physicians' cognition and clinical behavior when evaluating patients that may need fluid therapy. BACKGROUND: Proponents of dynamic fluid responsiveness testing advocate measuring cardiac output or stroke volume after a maneuver to prove that further fluids will increase cardiac output. However, surveys suggest that fluid therapy in clinical practice is often given without prior responsiveness testing. DESIGN: Thematic analysis of face-to-face structured interviews. SETTING: ICUs and medical-surgical wards in acute care hospitals. SUBJECTS: Intensivists and hospitalist physicians. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We conducted 43 interviews with experienced physicians in 19 hospitals. Hospitalized patients with hypotension, tachycardia, oliguria, or elevated serum lactate are commonly seen by physicians who weigh the risks and benefits of more fluid therapy. Encounters are often with unfamiliar patients and evaluation and decisions are completed quickly without involving other physicians. Dynamic testing for fluid responsiveness is used much less often than static methods and fluid boluses are often ordered with no testing at all. This approach is rationalized by factors that discourage dynamic testing: unavailability of equipment, time to obtain test results, or lack of expertise in obtaining valid data. Two mental calculations are particularly influential: physicians' estimate of the base rate of fluid responsiveness (determined by physical examination, chart review, and previous responses to fluid boluses) and physicians' perception of patient harm if 500 or 1,000 mL fluid boluses are ordered. When the perception of harm is low, physicians use heuristics that rationalize skipping dynamic testing. LIMITATIONS: Geographic limitation to hospitals in Minnesota, United States. CONCLUSIONS: If dynamic responsiveness testing is to be used more often in routine clinical practice, physicians must be more convinced of the benefits of dynamic testing, that they can obtain valid results quickly and believe that even small fluid boluses harm their patients.

Improving long-term outcomes after discharge from intensive care unit: report from a stakeholders' conference.

BACKGROUND: Millions of patients are discharged from intensive care units annually. These intensive care survivors and their families frequently report a wide range of impairments in their health status which may last for months and years after hospital discharge. OBJECTIVES: To report on a 2-day Society of Critical Care Medicine conference aimed at improving the long-term outcomes after critical illness for patients and their families. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty-one invited stakeholders participated in the conference. Stakeholders represented key professional organizations and groups, predominantly from North America, which are involved in the care of intensive care survivors after hospital discharge. DESIGN: Invited experts and Society of Critical Care Medicine members presented a summary of existing data regarding the potential long-term physical, cognitive and mental health problems after intensive care and the results from studies of postintensive care unit interventions to address these problems. Stakeholders provided reactions, perspectives, concerns and strategies aimed at improving care and mitigating these long-term health problems. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Three major themes emerged from the conference regarding: (1) raising awareness and education, (2) understanding and addressing barriers to practice, and (3) identifying research gaps and resources. Postintensive care syndrome was agreed upon as the recommended term to describe new or worsening problems in physical, cognitive, or mental health status arising after a critical illness and persisting beyond acute care hospitalization. The term could be applied to either a survivor or family member. CONCLUSIONS: Improving care for intensive care survivors and their families requires collaboration between practitioners and researchers in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. Strategies were developed to address the major themes arising from the conference to improve outcomes for survivors and families.

Study protocol to test the efficacy of self-administration of dexmedetomidine sedative therapy on anxiety, delirium, and ventilator days in critically ill mechanically ventilated patients: an open-label randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Administration of sedative and opioid medications to patients receiving mechanical ventilatory support in the intensive care unit is a common clinical practice. METHODS: A two-site randomized open-label clinical trial will test the efficacy of self-management of sedative therapy with dexmedetomidine compared to usual care on anxiety, delirium, and duration of ventilatory support after randomization. Secondary objectives are to compare self-management of sedative therapy to usual care on level of alertness, total aggregate sedative and opioid medication exposure, and ventilator-free days up to day 28 after study enrolment. Exploratory objectives of the study are to compare self-management of sedative therapy to usual care on 3- and 6-month post-discharge physical and functional status, psychological well-being (depression, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder), health-related quality of life, and recollections of ICU care. ICU patients (n = 190) who are alert enough to follow commands to self-manage sedative therapy are randomly assigned to self-management of sedative therapy or usual care. Patients remain in the ICU sedative medication study phase for up to 7 days as long as mechanically ventilated. DISCUSSION: The care of critically ill mechanically ventilated patients can change significantly over the course of a 5-year clinical trial. Changes in sedation and pain interventions, oxygenation approaches, and standards related to extubation have substantially impacted consistency in the number of eligible patients over time. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in mandated extended pauses in trial enrolment as well as alterations in recruitment methods out of concern for study personnel safety and availability of protective equipment. Patient triaging among healthcare institutions due to COVID-19 cases also has resulted in inconsistent access to the eligible study population. This has made it even more imperative for the study team to be flexible and innovative to identify and enrol all eligible participants. Patient-controlled sedation is a novel approach to the management of patient symptoms that may be able to alleviate mechanical ventilation-induced distress without serious side effects. Findings from this study will provide insight into the efficacy of this approach on short- and long-term outcomes in a subset of mechanically ventilated patients. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02819141. Registered on June 29, 2016.

Targeted temperature management in critical care: a report and recommendations from five professional societies.

OBJECTIVE: Representatives of five international critical care societies convened topic specialists and a nonexpert jury to review, assess, and report on studies of targeted temperature management and to provide clinical recommendations. DATA SOURCES: Questions were allocated to experts who reviewed their areas, made formal presentations, and responded to questions. Jurors also performed independent searches. Sources used for consensus derived exclusively from peer-reviewed reports of human and animal studies. STUDY SELECTION: Question-specific studies were selected from literature searches; jurors independently determined the relevance of each study included in the synthesis. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: 1) The jury opines that the term "targeted temperature management" replace "therapeutic hypothermia." 2) The jury opines that descriptors (e.g., "mild") be replaced with explicit targeted temperature management profiles. 3) The jury opines that each report of a targeted temperature management trial enumerate the physiologic effects anticipated by the investigators and actually observed and/or measured in subjects in each arm of the trial as a strategy for increasing knowledge of the dose/duration/response characteristics of temperature management. This enumeration should be kept separate from the body of the report, be organized by body systems, and be made without assertions about the impact of any specific effect on the clinical outcome. 4) The jury STRONGLY RECOMMENDS targeted temperature management to a target of 32°C-34°C as the preferred treatment (vs. unstructured temperature management) of out-of-hospital adult cardiac arrest victims with a first registered electrocardiography rhythm of ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia and still unconscious after restoration of spontaneous circulation (strong recommendation, moderate quality of evidence). 5) The jury WEAKLY RECOMMENDS the use of targeted temperature management to 33°C-35.5°C (vs. less structured management) in the treatment of term newborns who sustained asphyxia and exhibit acidosis and/or encephalopathy (weak recommendation, moderate quality of evidence).

Operationalizing Ethical Guidance for Ventilator Allocation in Minnesota: Saving the Most Lives or Exacerbating Health Disparities?

A statewide working group in Minnesota created a ventilator allocation scoring system in anticipation of functioning under a Crisis Standards of Care declaration. The scoring system was intended for patients with and without coronavirus disease 2019. There was disagreement about whether the scoring system might exacerbate health disparities and about whether the score should include age. We measured the relationship of ventilator scores to in-hospital and 3-month mortality. We analyzed our findings in the context of ethical and legal guidance for the triage of scarce resources. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Multihospital within a single healthcare system. PATIENTS: Five-hundred four patients emergently intubated and admitted to the ICU. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The Ventilator Allocation Score was positively associated with higher mortality (p < 0.0001). The 3-month mortality rate for patients with a score of 6 or higher was 96% (42/44 patients). Age was positively associated with mortality. The 3-month mortality rate for patients 80 and older with scores of 4 or greater was 93% (40/43 patients). Of patients assigned a score of 5, those with end stage renal disease had lower mortality than patients without end stage renal disease although the difference did not achieve statistical significance (n = 27; 25% vs 58%; p = 0.2). CONCLUSIONS: The Ventilator Allocation Score can accurately identify patients with high rates of short-term mortality. However, these high mortality patients only represent 27% of all the patients who died, limiting the utility of the score for allocation of scarce resources. The score may unfairly prioritize older patients and inadvertently exacerbate racial health disparities through the inclusion of specific comorbidities such as end stage renal disease. Triage frameworks that include age should be considered. Purposeful efforts must be taken to ensure that triage protocols do not perpetuate or exacerbate prevailing inequities. Further work on the allocation of scarce resources in critical care settings would benefit from consensus on the primary ethical objective.

Electronically Triggered Sepsis Alert in Non-Intensive Care Inpatients Using Modified Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome Criteria: A Retrospective Observational Study with In-Depth Analysis of Surgical Patients.

Background: Our center initiated an electronic Sepsis Best Practice Alert (sBPA) protocol to aid in early sepsis detection and treatment. However, surgery alters peri-operative physiology, which may trigger an sBPA for noninfectious causes. This study aimed to provide early evaluation of automated sBPA utility in surgical patients. Methods: This study was a retrospective review of the outcomes of patients admitted to the University of Minnesota Medical Center (but not to the intensive care unit) from August 2015-March 2016 and compared how the sBPA performed in those having and not having surgery. An sBPA prompted nursing to draw blood for an immediate lactate assay if two modified systemic inflammatory response syndrome (mSIRS) criteria or three mSIRS criteria within 24 hours after surgery were met. Physicians were notified if the lactate concentration was >2 mmol/L. Further review was performed of data collected prospectively on the surgical patients. Results: A total of 10,335 patients were admitted (2,158 surgery and 8,177 non-surgery). Of these, 33% of the surgery patients and 35% of the patients not having surgery triggered sBPAs. In surgery patients, 13% of lactate concentrations were >2 mmol/L versus 25% in patients not having surgery. An sBPA was triggered more frequently after procedures with a wound class of 4 (5% vs. 2%), emergency operation (23% vs. 10%), and longer operations (280 min vs. 222 min (p < 0.05 for all). Surgery patients triggering sBPAs had longer hospital stays (9.6 vs. 4.4 days; p < 0.05), more surgical site infections (7% vs. 2%; p < 0.05), and a similar mortality rate (3% vs. 4%; p = 0.15) than those who did not trigger an sBPA. Conclusion: An sBPA fired in a third of all inpatients, and an sBPA that prompted lactate measurements was less likely to be abnormal in surgery patients than in those not having surgery. There was no difference in the mortality rate in surgical patients who fired and those who did not; however, the sBPA did identify patients with a more complicated post-operative course. Further refinements of the electronic trigger should increase BPA specificity.

Multicenter implementation of a consensus-developed, evidence-based, spontaneous breathing trial protocol.

OBJECTIVE: Evidence-based practice recommendations abound, but implementation is often unstructured and poorly audited. We assessed the ability of a peer network to implement an evidence-based best practice protocol and to measure patient outcomes. DESIGN: Consensus definition of spontaneous breathing trial followed by implementation in eight academic medical centers. SETTING: Six medical, two surgical, and two combined medical/surgical adult intensive care units among eight academic medical centers. STUDY POPULATION: Patients initiating mechanical ventilation through an endotracheal tube during a 12-wk interval formed the study population. INTERVENTIONS: Adoption and implementation of a common spontaneous breathing trial protocol across multiple intensive care units. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Seven hundred five patients had 3,486 safety screens for conducting a spontaneous breathing trial; 2072 (59%) patients failed the safety screen. Another 379 (11%) patients failed a 2-min tolerance screen and 1,122 (34%) patients had a full 30-120 min spontaneous breathing trial performed. Seventy percent of eligible patients were enrolled. Only 55% of passing spontaneous breathing trials resulted in liberation from mechanical ventilatory support before another spontaneous breathing trial was performed. CONCLUSIONS: Peer networks can be effective in promoting and implementing evidence-based best practices. Implementation of a best practice (spontaneous breathing trial) may be necessary for, but by itself insufficient to achieve, consistent and timely liberation from ventilator support.

Medical residents' self-reported adherence to guidelines during placement of central venous catheters .

In teaching hospitals, the majority of central venous catheters are placed by medical residents. No studies have examined residents' adherence to safe practices during these procedures. We conducted a survey to gather self-reported data on the techniques that internal medicine residents use when placing a central venous catheter to minimize their own risk of infection and their patients' risk of bleeding-related complications.

Post-ICU consequences of patient wakefulness and sedative exposure during mechanical ventilation.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the relationship between measures of critical illness (sedative/analgesic administration, wakefulness and organ dysfunction), intensive care unit (ICU) recall and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. DESIGN: Prospective, observational study with post-ICU follow-up. SETTING: Medical and surgical ICUs at a teaching hospital. PATIENTS: Two hundred seventy-seven subjects requiring >36h of mechanical ventilation were enrolled; 149 completed follow-up interviews 2 months later and 80 at 6 months. INTERVENTIONS: None. RESULTS: ICU recall was greater for events occurring at the end of critical illness; however, 18% of subjects had amnesia for the entire ICU course. Factual ICU recall was weakly associated with increased wakefulness during mechanical ventilation (r2=0.03-0.11, p<0.05). Posttraumatic stress disorder prevalence was 17% at 2 months and 15% at 6 months. The avoidance-numbing cluster had the highest specificity (91%) for a formal diagnosis and the re-experiencing cluster had the lowest (69%). Recall of a delirious memory during critical illness was associated with more severe posttraumatic stress symptoms, but there was no association between posttraumatic stress symptoms and factual recall of ICU events. Neither ICU recall nor posttraumatic stress symptoms were associated with the intensity of sedative administration during mechanical ventilation. Posttraumatic stress symptoms were lowest in patients either the most awake during mechanical ventilation or the least awake. CONCLUSION: Wakefulness during mechanical ventilation has a greater influence on post-ICU recall and posttraumatic stress symptoms than sedative drug exposure or severity of illness. It is difficult to predict the future psychological consequences of an individual patient's critical illness.

The science of implementation: changing the practice of critical care.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Few would disagree that evidence from clinical research should be brought to the bedside in an efficient and equitable manner. Unfortunately, this common agreement does not result in practice change at the bedside where delayed and variable implementation is common. Recognition of this gap has resulted in a new discipline called implementation science that seeks to understand the reasons for slow adoption of clinical therapeutics and to discover effective strategies that accelerate practice change. This article reviews implementation theory and strategies and their effectiveness and relevance to critical care. RECENT FINDINGS: The absence of a proven effective framework for implementing clinical practice change has resulted in a patchwork of interventions in ambulatory and acute care medicine. There is an increasing appreciation that interventions should be undertaken only after careful, theory-based examination of the source and strength of the evidence, the organizational and professional context in which the change will be made, and the availability of facilitating methods. Barriers to implementing sepsis management programs have been identified and, in some cases, overcome. SUMMARY: Changing clinical practice is sometimes as difficult as the basic science and clinical trials work that led to the discovery of beneficial therapies. Investigators are now beginning to develop and test more theory-based implementation models that are relevant to the clinical environment. A proportion of the resources used in developing an ICU guideline or protocol must be dedicated to the implementation strategy for successful adoption. ICUs are ideal organizations to test new approaches in implementation science. Intensive care professionals should insist that their practice environment have both a culture that is supportive of adopting new practices and adequate resources to implement them into patient care.

Clinical and Sociocultural Factors Associated With Failure to Escalate Care of Deteriorating Patients.

In-hospital medical emergencies occur frequently. Understanding how clinicians respond to deteriorating patients outside the intensive care unit (ICU) could improve "rescue" interventions and rapid response programs. This was a qualitative study with interviews with 40 clinicians caring for patients who had a "Code Blue" activation or an unplanned ICU admission at teaching hospitals over 7 months. Four study physicians independently analyzed interview transcripts; refined themes were linked to the transcript using text analysis software. Nine themes were found to be associated with clinicians' management of deteriorating patients. Multiple human biases influence daily care for deteriorating hospitalized patients. A novel finding is that "moral distress" affects escalation behavior for patients with poor prognosis. Most themes indicate that ward culture influences clinicians to wait until the last minute to escalate care despite being worried about the patients' condition.

Letting the Patient Decide: A Case Report of Self-Administered Sedation During Mechanical Ventilation.

It is common for critical care nurses to administer sedative medications to patients receiving mechanical ventilation. Although patient-controlled analgesia is frequently used in practice to promote effective self-management of pain by patients, it is not known if patient-controlled sedation can be used to promote effective self-management of distressing symptoms associated with mechanical ventilation. A randomized pilot trial was conducted to evaluate whether patient self-administered sedation with dexmedetomidine is safe and acceptable for self-management of anxiety during ventilator support. This case report details the experiences of one patient enrolled in the pilot trial who was randomly assigned to the experimental dexmedetomidine intervention, completed the study protocol, and provided feedback. In a poststudy survey, the patient responded positively to the use of self-administered sedation with dexmedetomidine during ventilator support.

Medical post-traumatic stress disorder: catching up with the cutting edge in stress research.

We briefly summarize two original research papers and a review article. We then review the formal structure of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and discuss the use of continuous measures of PTSD in comparison with diagnostic instruments. Problems with distinguishing incident from prevalent PTSD cases lead to questions of whether medical PTSD is a new important problem. By examining current studies, we demonstrate that medical PTSD is lagging in fundamental and interventional research but we discuss how medical PTSD has unique opportunities to develop causal models that could inform the greater field of stress studies. We conclude by advocating that future medical PTSD research efforts should focus on understanding how fundamental brain processes are affected during acute medical stress.

Giving Doctors' Daily Progress Notes to Hospitalized Patients and Families to Improve Patient Experience.

Hospital quality includes excellent physician-patient communication. The objective was to determine effects of distributing physicians' notes to patients. Hospitalized patients or family members on 6 wards at a university hospital received daily a printed copy of their medical team's progress note. Surveys were completed about the benefits and adverse effects of reading the physician notes. In all, 74% to 86% of patients or family members responded favorably that receiving doctors' notes improved understanding of their health condition or gave them more control over their hospital course. Patient concerns about privacy or offense were uncommon, although 16% thought notes were confusing or caused worry. Note distribution had minor effects on physician note writing practice. Having patients and family members read their physicians' progress notes is feasible and enhances patients' understanding of their diagnostic and treatment plan. Notes supplement traditional physician-patient verbal communication practice and have the potential to improve the hospitalized patient experience.

Metabolomics in COPD Acute Respiratory Failure Requiring Noninvasive Positive Pressure Ventilation.

We aimed to investigate whether metabolomic analysis can discriminate acute respiratory failure due to COPD exacerbation from respiratory failure due to heart failure and pneumonia. Since COPD exacerbation is often overdiagnosed, we focused on those COPD exacerbations that were severe enough to require noninvasive mechanical ventilation. We enrolled stable COPD subjects and patients with acute respiratory failure requiring noninvasive mechanical ventilation due to COPD, heart failure, and pneumonia. We excluded subjects with history of both COPD and heart failure and patients with obstructive sleep apnea and obstructive lung disease other than COPD. We performed metabolomics analysis using NMR. We constructed partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models to distinguish metabolic profiles. Serum (p=0.001, R2 = 0.397, Q2 = 0.058) and urine metabolic profiles (p < 0.001, R2 = 0.419, Q2 = 0.142) were significantly different between the four diagnosis groups by PLS-DA. After excluding stable COPD patients, the metabolomes of the various respiratory failure groups did not cluster separately in serum (p=0.2, R2 = 0.631, Q2 = 0.246) or urine (p=0.065, R2 = 0.602, Q2 = -0.134). However, several metabolites in the serum were reduced in patients with COPD exacerbation and pneumonia. We did not find a metabolic profile unique to COPD exacerbation, but we were able to clearly and reliably distinguish stable COPD patients from patients with respiratory failure in both serum and urine.

Predictive Associations of Music, Anxiety, and Sedative Exposure on Mechanical Ventilation Weaning Trials.

BACKGROUND: Weaning from mechanical ventilation requires increased respiratory effort, which can heighten anxiety and later prolong the need for mechanical ventilation. OBJECTIVES: To examine the predictive associations of music intervention, anxiety, sedative exposure, and patients' characteristics on time to initiation and duration of weaning trials of patients receiving mechanical ventilation. METHODS: A descriptive, correlational design was used for a secondary analysis of data from a randomized trial. Music listening was defined as self-initiated, patient-directed music via headphones. Anxiety was measured daily with a visual analog scale. Sedative exposure was operationalized as a daily sedation intensity score and a sedative dose frequency. Analyses consisted of descriptive statistics, graphing, survival analysis, Cox proportional hazards regression, and linear regression. RESULTS: Of 307 patients, 52% were women and 86% were white. Mean age was 59.3 (SD, 14.4) years, mean Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation III score was 62.9 (SD, 21.6), mean duration of ventilatory support was 8 (range, 1-52) days, and mean stay in the intensive care unit was 18 (range, 2-71) days. Music listening, anxiety levels, and sedative exposure did not influence time to initial weaning trial or duration of trials. Clinical factors of illness severity, days of weaning trials, and tracheostomy placement influenced weaning patterns in this sample. CONCLUSIONS: Prospective studies of music intervention and other psychophysiological factors during weaning from mechanical ventilation are needed to better understand factors that promote successful weaning.

Safety and Acceptability of Patient-Administered Sedatives During Mechanical Ventilation.

BACKGROUND: Safety and acceptability of sedative self-administration by patients receiving mechanical ventilation is unknown. OBJECTIVES: To determine if self-administration of dexmedetomidine by patients is safe and acceptable for self-management of anxiety during ventilatory support. METHODS: In a pilot trial in 3 intensive care units, 17 intubated patients were randomly assigned to dexmedetomidine and 20 to usual care. Dexmedetomidine was administered via standard pumps for patient-controlled analgesia, with a basal infusion (0.1-0.7 µg/kg per hour) titrated by the number of patient-triggered doses (0.25 µg/kg per dose). Safety goals were heart rate greater than 40/min, systolic blood pressure greater than 80 mm Hg, and diastolic blood pressure greater than 50 mm Hg. Acceptability was based on patients' self-reported satisfaction and ability to administer the sedative. A 100-mm visual analog scale was used daily to assess patients' anxiety. RESULTS: The sample was 59% male and 89% white. Mean values were age, 50.6 years; score on the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation, 60.1; and protocol duration, 3.4 days. Five dexmedetomidine patients had blood pressure and/or heart rate lower than safety parameters, necessitating short-term treatment. Nurses' adherence to reporting of safety parameters was 100%; adherence to the dexmedetomidine titration algorithm was 73%. Overall baseline anxiety score was 38.4 and did not change significantly (ßday = 2.1; SE, 2.5; P = .40). Most dexmedetomidine patients (92%) were satisfied or very satisfied with their ability to self-administer medication. CONCLUSIONS: For select patients, self-administration of dexmedetomidine is safe and acceptable.