A patient boarding in the emergency department begins decompensating after a profound fit of retching and vomiting. Blood pressure is dropping and o2 sats are falling...you eyeball the patient from the door and he looks severely ill. No time to page the floor team...time to dive in and resuscitate!
Most patients who undergo intubation will receive some sort of post-intubation sedative. In the ICU, over-sedation is common, and early deep sedation is associated with worse outcomes in mechanically ventilated patients – specifically, higher mortality. Does the choice of sedative affect mortality?
What's the difference between Hypoxia & Hypoxemia
Does intensive blood pressure lowering to a target of < 140 mm Hg versus < 180 mm Hg impact outcome after acute intracerebral hemorrhage? Are there risks associated with targeting a lower systolic blood pressure?
The sudden death CT may help identify the cause of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
The patient with life-threatening asthma requires a cool head and swift action. This video disucsses the essentials to manage these critically ill patients.
Watch here
You are on your critical care rotation helping take care of multiple ventilated patients. At the end of your night shift, one of the respiratory therapists comes up to you and says, “Hey, the new ABG just came back. It is 7.25/52/70/24 .” What do these numbers mean and what can you do to help?
A 47-year-old man with COVID-19 pneumonia complicated by severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) suddenly desaturates. Point-of-care ultrasound and chest x-ray are consistent with pneumothorax. After placement of a pigtail catheter, hypoxemia persists and a large continuous air leak is present. What are the next steps in management of a suspected bronchopleural fistula?
Remember to look at the differential of your CBCs. A recent publication demonstrated in retrospective data that higher proportions of bands on the WBC differential were associated with increased likelihoods of both severe bloodstream infections and mortality.
Watch this critbits video to learn about managing the crashing ventilated patient
