Introduction: Early mobilization reduces long-term muscle weakness after intensive care unit (ICU) admission, but barriers (e.g., anxiety, lack of motivation) may complicate patients' adherence to exercise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We report a case of a 25-year-old female who presented with fever, rash and general malaise.
Case Presentation: She was initially diagnosed and treated for peri-/myocarditis, but she deteriorated quickly with the development of extensive bilateral consolidations for which she was mechanically ventilated. Two weeks before admission, she took isotretinoin for less than a week for disfiguring acne.
Introduction: Mercaptopurine, a thiopurine, is used in various disorders of immune regulation, such as autoimmune hepatitis. Thiopurine metabolism is complex with risk for overdosing, especially when metabolism is impaired by liver dysfunction. Hepatotoxicity may be due to mercaptopurine overdose and is often reversible after prompt cessation of the drug.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Impaired right ventricular (RV) function after cardiac surgery is associated with morbidity and long-term mortality. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that play a role in the development of RV dysfunction in the perioperative cardiac surgery setting.
Design: We performed a prospective, observational, single centre study.
Eur J Clin Pharmacol
April 2023
Purpose: Formative assessments can help motivate students and ease students' learning through feedback. There is a pressing need for improvement of clinical pharmacotherapy (CPT) education since junior doctors make many prescribing errors. The aim of this study was to determine whether a formative assessment with personalized narrative feedback helps medical students to increase their prescribing skills.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: COVID-19 associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA) is associated with increased morbidity and mortality in ICU patients. We investigated the incidence of, risk factors for and potential benefit of a pre-emptive screening strategy for CAPA in ICUs in the Netherlands/Belgium during immunosuppressive COVID-19 treatment.
Materials And Methods: A retrospective, observational, multicentre study was performed from September 2020-April 2021 including patients admitted to the ICU who had undergone diagnostics for CAPA.
Purpose: Fentanyl is an analgesic that is frequently prescribed, which resulted in non-intentional as well as intentional misuse and deaths. Here, we present a postmortem case of a patient who clearly died of a fentanyl overdose due to an extensive number of fentanyl patches combined with oral intake of fentanyl and cocaine. We aimed to show how postmortem analysis can be used to interpret postmortem fentanyl concentrations in unique cases like the one we present.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSevere salicylate intoxication usually presents with a high anion gap metabolic acidosis. We describe a patient with severe salicylate intoxication who presented with a surprisingly normal anion gap metabolic acidosis. Initial salicylate level was 594 mg/L (therapeutic range 50-300 mg/L).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Prescribing errors occur frequently, especially among junior doctors. Our aim was to investigate prescribing errors made by final-year medical students. Information on these errors can help to improve education on and assessment of clinical pharmacotherapy (CPT).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA patient with severe asthma on benralizumab therapy was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) for a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. At the end of the 8 week benralizumab dosing interval, discussion arose as to whether benralizumab should be administered or if treatment should be discontinued, due to the lack of experience with benralizumab in this situation. Severe broncho-obstruction developed, and the next injection of benralizumab was administered during ICU admission without detrimental symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci
April 2021
Total hip- and knee arthroplasty generally result in successful outcomes. A small percentage of patients however suffer from periprosthetic joint infections (PJI) postoperatively, often with severe consequences. The standard treatment of chronic PJIs consists of a staged arthroplasty exchange during which antibiotic therapy plays a crucial role.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFApproximately 500 patients per year are admitted to the emergency department (ED) of the Erasmus University Medical Center presenting with intoxications with medication. For adequate treatment, it is sometimes important to know which drugs in which quantities were ingested. This can require laboratory analysis of blood or urine samples; however, these samples do not provide information about the possible effects that can still be expected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 28-year-old female patient was admitted to our hospital with severe dyspnoea and hypoxemia due to methaemoglobinaemia caused by dapsone. The patient recovered completely after repeated infusions of methylene blue and cessation of dapsone. However, 12 days after cessation of dapsone, the patient was readmitted due to recurrence of symptoms based on a relapse of methaemoglobinaemia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Delirium during ICU stay is a widespread problem with complex aetiology. A premorbid psychiatric disorder has been associated with an increased incidence of delirium in the general hospital population, but data on the impact of ICU delirium and consequences for morbidity and long-term mortality remain scarce.
Methods: In this single-centre retrospective analysis, 472 patients with an ICU stay >48 hours were included during a 2-year period.
We describe a 27-year-old female with repeated episodes of pulseless electrical activity due to intoxication with a substance that was unidentified at presentation. Severe QRS widening was observed and empiric treatment with sodium bicarbonate and intravenous lipid emulsion was administered. In this case, intraosseous administration of lipid emulsion failed to improve haemodynamic parameters, suggesting that this dose remained in the bone marrow compartment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The yew (Taxus baccata) is a common evergreen tree containing the toxin taxine B. Between 42 and 91 g of yew leaf is lethal to a 70-kg adult. The objective of this article is to present an overview of findings in fatal yew intoxications.
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