Management of Heat-Related Illness and Injury in the ICU: A Concise Definitive Review.

OBJECTIVES: The increasing frequency of extreme heat events has led to a growing number of heat-related injuries and illnesses in ICUs. The objective of this review was to summarize and critically appraise evidence for the management of heat-related illnesses and injuries for critical care multiprofessionals. DATA SOURCES: Ovid Medline, Embase, Cochrane Clinical Trials Register, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases were searched from inception through August 2023 for studies reporting on heat-related injury and illness in the setting of the ICU. STUDY SELECTION: English-language systematic reviews, narrative reviews, meta-analyses, randomized clinical trials, and observational studies were prioritized for review. Bibliographies from retrieved articles were scanned for articles that may have been missed. DATA EXTRACTION: Data regarding study methodology, patient population, management strategy, and clinical outcomes were qualitatively assessed. DATA SYNTHESIS: Several risk factors and prognostic indicators for patients diagnosed with heat-related illness and injury have been identified and reported in the literature. Effective management of these patients has included various cooling methods and fluid replenishment. Drug therapy is not effective. Multiple organ dysfunction, neurologic injury, and disseminated intravascular coagulation are common complications of heat stroke and must be managed accordingly. Burn injury from contact with hot surfaces or pavement can occur, requiring careful evaluation and possible excision and grafting in severe cases. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of heat-related illness and injury is increasing, and rapid initiation of appropriate therapies is necessary to optimize outcomes. Additional research is needed to identify effective methods and strategies to achieve rapid cooling, the role of immunomodulators and anticoagulant medications, the use of biomarkers to identify organ failure, and the role of artificial intelligence and precision medicine.

Volunteerism during humanitarian crises: a practical guide.

Volunteerism to provide humanitarian aid occurs in response to disasters, crises, and conflict. Each of those volunteerism triggers engenders personal risk borne by the healthcare volunteer while rendering aid and merit specific evaluation. Factors that impact decision-making with regard to volunteering are personal, structural and crisis specific. Practical approaches to travel and on-scene safety benefit volunteers and should inform planning and preparation for volunteerism-driven travel. These approaches include planning for evacuation and potential rescue. These unique skills and approaches are generally not part of medical education outside of military service. The global medical community, including medical professional organizations, should embrace this opportunity to improve medical education and professional development to support humanitarian aid volunteerism. Disaster, crisis, or conflict-driven healthcare volunteerism highlights the core elements of altruism, dedication, and humanity that permeate clinician's drive to render aid and save lives.

The Future of Critical Care: Optimizing Technologies and a Learning Healthcare System to Potentiate a More Humanistic Approach to Critical Care.

While technological innovations are the invariable crux of speculation about the future of critical care, they cannot replace the clinician at the bedside. This article summarizes the work of the Society of Critical Care Medicine-appointed multiprofessional task for the Future of Critical Care. The Task Force notes that critical care practice will be transformed by novel technologies, integration of artificial intelligence decision support algorithms, and advances in seamless data operationalization across diverse healthcare systems and geographic regions and within federated datasets. Yet, new technologies will be relevant and meaningful only if they improve the very human endeavor of caring for someone who is critically ill.

Sharing ICU Patient Data Responsibly Under the Society of Critical Care Medicine/European Society of Intensive Care Medicine Joint Data Science Collaboration: The Amsterdam University Medical Centers Database (AmsterdamUMCdb) Example.

OBJECTIVES: Critical care medicine is a natural environment for machine learning approaches to improve outcomes for critically ill patients as admissions to ICUs generate vast amounts of data. However, technical, legal, ethical, and privacy concerns have so far limited the critical care medicine community from making these data readily available. The Society of Critical Care Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine have identified ICU patient data sharing as one of the priorities under their Joint Data Science Collaboration. To encourage ICUs worldwide to share their patient data responsibly, we now describe the development and release of Amsterdam University Medical Centers Database (AmsterdamUMCdb), the first freely available critical care database in full compliance with privacy laws from both the United States and Europe, as an example of the feasibility of sharing complex critical care data. SETTING: University hospital ICU. SUBJECTS: Data from ICU patients admitted between 2003 and 2016. INTERVENTIONS: We used a risk-based deidentification strategy to maintain data utility while preserving privacy. In addition, we implemented contractual and governance processes, and a communication strategy. Patient organizations, supporting hospitals, and experts on ethics and privacy audited these processes and the database. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: AmsterdamUMCdb contains approximately 1 billion clinical data points from 23,106 admissions of 20,109 patients. The privacy audit concluded that reidentification is not reasonably likely, and AmsterdamUMCdb can therefore be considered as anonymous information, both in the context of the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the European General Data Protection Regulation. The ethics audit concluded that responsible data sharing imposes minimal burden, whereas the potential benefit is tremendous. CONCLUSIONS: Technical, legal, ethical, and privacy challenges related to responsible data sharing can be addressed using a multidisciplinary approach. A risk-based deidentification strategy, that complies with both U.S. and European privacy regulations, should be the preferred approach to releasing ICU patient data. This supports the shared Society of Critical Care Medicine and European Society of Intensive Care Medicine vision to improve critical care outcomes through scientific inquiry of vast and combined ICU datasets.

A Perspective from the Neurocritical Care Society and the Society of Critical Care Medicine: Team-Based Care for Neurological Critical Illness.

The Neurocritical Care Society and the Society of Critical Care Medicine have worked together to create a perspective regarding the Standards of Neurologic Critical Care Units (Moheet et al. in Neurocrit Care 29:145-160, 2018). The most neurologically ill or injured patients warrant the highest standard of care available; this supports the need for defining and establishing specialized neurological critical care units. Rather than interpreting the Standards as being exclusionary, it is most appropriate to embrace them in the setting of team-based care. Since there are many more patients than there are highly specialized beds, collaborative care and appropriate transfer agreements are essential in promoting excellent patient outcomes. This viewpoint addresses areas of clarification and emphasizes the need for collegiality and partnership in delivering the best specialty critical care to our patients.

ICU Admission, Discharge, and Triage Guidelines: A Framework to Enhance Clinical Operations, Development of Institutional Policies, and Further Research.

OBJECTIVES: To update the Society of Critical Care Medicine's guidelines for ICU admission, discharge, and triage, providing a framework for clinical practice, the development of institutional policies, and further research. DESIGN: An appointed Task Force followed a standard, systematic, and evidence-based approach in reviewing the literature to develop these guidelines. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The assessment of the evidence and recommendations was based on the principles of the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation system. The general subject was addressed in sections: admission criteria and benefits of different levels of care, triage, discharge timing and strategies, use of outreach programs to supplement ICU care, quality assurance/improvement and metrics, nonbeneficial treatment in the ICU, and rationing considerations. The literature searches yielded 2,404 articles published from January 1998 to October 2013 for review. Following the appraisal of the literature, discussion, and consensus, recommendations were written. CONCLUSION: Although these are administrative guidelines, the subjects addressed encompass complex ethical and medico-legal aspects of patient care that affect daily clinical practice. A limited amount of high-quality evidence made it difficult to answer all the questions asked related to ICU admission, discharge, and triage. Despite these limitations, the members of the Task Force believe that these recommendations provide a comprehensive framework to guide practitioners in making informed decisions during the admission, discharge, and triage process as well as in resolving issues of nonbeneficial treatment and rationing. We need to further develop preventive strategies to reduce the burden of critical illness, educate our noncritical care colleagues about these interventions, and improve our outreach, developing early identification and intervention systems.

Critical Violent Injury in the United States: A Review and Call to Action.

OBJECTIVE: This review provides an overview of what is known about violent injury requiring critical care, including child physical abuse, homicide, youth violence, intimate partner violence, self-directed injury, firearm-related injury, and elder physical abuse. DATA SOURCES: We searched PubMed, Scopus, Ovid Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews, and the National Guideline Clearinghouse. We also included surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Trauma Data Bank. STUDY SELECTION: Search criteria limited to articles in English and reports of humans, utilizing the following search terms: intentional violence, intentional harm, violence, crime victims, domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse, geriatric abuse, nonaccidental injury, nonaccidental trauma, and intentional injury in combination with trauma centers, critical care, or emergency medicine. Additionally, we included relevant articles discovered during review of the articles identified through this search. DATA EXTRACTION: Two hundred one abstracts were reviewed for relevance, and 168 abstracts were selected and divided into eight categories (child physical abuse, homicide, youth violence, intimate partner violence, self-directed injury, firearm-related injury, and elder physical abuse) for complete review by pairs of authors. In our final review, we included 155 articles (139 articles selected from our search strategy, 16 additional highly relevant articles, many published after we conducted our formal search). DATA SYNTHESIS: A minority of articles (7%) provided information specific to violent injury requiring critical care. Given what is known about violent injury in general, the burden of critical violent injury is likely substantial, yet little is known about violent injury requiring critical care. CONCLUSIONS: Significant gaps in knowledge exist and must be addressed by meaningful, sustained tracking and study of the epidemiology, clinical care, outcomes, and costs of critical violent injury. Research must aim for not only information but also action, including effective interventions to prevent and mitigate the consequences of critical violent injury.

Acquired hemophilia presenting as profound hematuria: evaluation, diagnosis, and management of elusive cause of bleeding in the emergency department setting.

BACKGROUND: There are numerous causes of bleeding that may present to the Emergency Department (ED). Although rare, acquired hemophilia is a potentially life-threatening bleeding disorder, with reported mortality rates ranging from 6% to 8% among patients who received proper diagnosis and treatment. Approximately two thirds of patients with this condition will present with major bleeding, the magnitude of which may necessitate urgent evaluation and care. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the evaluation, differential diagnosis, and management of acquired hemophilia for the emergency physician. CASE REPORT: A case report of a patient who presented to the ED with gross hematuria secondary to undiagnosed acquired hemophilia is described to facilitate a review of the laboratory evaluation, differential diagnosis, and treatment of acquired hemophilia. CONCLUSION: Patients with acquired hemophilia-related bleeding may present to the ED for care, given the often serious nature of their bleeding. Delayed diagnosis may postpone the initiation of targeted, effective treatments for achieving hemostasis, with potentially catastrophic consequences, particularly in patients who require emergent invasive procedures. Recognition of the potential for an underlying bleeding disorder and subsequent consultation with a hematologist are critical first steps in effectively identifying and managing a patient with acquired hemophilia who presents with bleeding.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education resident duty hour new standards: history, changes, and impact on staffing of intensive care units.

OBJECTIVES: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education recently released new standards for supervision and duty hours for residency programs. These new standards, which will affect over 100,000 residents, take effect in July 2011. In response to these new guidelines, the Society of Critical Care Medicine convened a task force to develop a white paper on the impact of changes in resident duty hours on the critical care workforce and staffing of intensive care units. PARTICIPANTS: A multidisciplinary group of professionals with expertise in critical care education and clinical practice. DATA SOURCES AND SYNTHESIS: Relevant medical literature was accessed through a systematic MEDLINE search and by requesting references from all task force members. Material published by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and other specialty organizations was also reviewed. Collaboratively and iteratively, the task force corresponded by electronic mail and held several conference calls to finalize this report. MAIN RESULTS: The new rules mandate that all first-year residents work no more than 16 hrs continuously, preserving the 80-hr limit on the resident workweek and 10-hr period between duty periods. More senior trainees may work a maximum of 24 hrs continuously, with an additional 4 hrs permitted for handoffs. Strategic napping is strongly suggested for trainees working longer shifts. CONCLUSIONS: Compliance with the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education duty-hour standards will compel workflow restructuring in intensive care units, which depend on residents to provide a substantial portion of care. Potential solutions include expanded utilization of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, telemedicine, offering critical care training positions to emergency medicine residents, and partnerships with hospitalists. Additional research will be necessary to evaluate the impact of the new standards on patient safety, continuity of care, resident learning, and staffing in the intensive care unit.

Clinicopathological conference: case report--a case of anorexia and weak arm.

The authors present the case of a 49-year-old female who presented to the emergency department with a chief complaint of "not eating well." She was found to have a heart murmur, a focal neurological deficit, and large mitral valve vegetation. The patient was later diagnosed with acute Pseudomonal endocarditis with septic emboli to the brain, liver, spleen, and kidneys. A discussion of the patient presentation, diagnostic evaluation, and outcome are reviewed.

Quantitative physico-chemical analysis of the acidosis of cardiac arrest.

Metabolic acidosis is a common finding after cardiac arrest. Until recently this acidosis was mainly attributed to lactate. The physico-chemical approach to acid-base balance permits the detection of previously unmeasured ions. These ions have been shown to affect the acid-base status of patients.