Disaster preparedness for intensive care units: Priorities to inform crisis standards of care.

Background: The number of disasters occurring globally is increasing. Natural hazards, changing geopolitical situations, and increasing population densities may lead to an increased likelihood of a surge of patients requiring health care, some of whom might be requiring intensive care-level treatment. There is a dearth of literature on intensive care unit (ICU) practitioner's priorities regarding disaster preparedness and crisis standards of care.

Caring for critically ill patients with a mental illness: A discursive paper providing an overview and case exploration of the delivery of intensive care to people with psychiatric comorbidity.

Aim: To address the need for additional education in the management of mental illness in the critical care setting by providing a broad overview of the interrelationship between critical illness and mental illness. The paper also offers practical advice to support critical care staff in managing patients with mental illness in critical care by discussing two hypothetical case scenarios involving aggressive and disorganised behaviour. People living with mental illness are over-represented among critically unwell patients and experience worse outcomes, contributing to a life expectancy up to 30 years shorter than their peers.

Disaster preparedness: A concept analysis and its application to the intensive care unit.

Objectives: The aim of the study is to understand the concept of disaster preparedness in relation to the intensive care unit through the review and critique of the peer-reviewed literature.

Review Method Used: Rodgers' method of evolutionary concept analysis was used in the study.

Data Sources: Healthcare databases included in the review were Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Public MEDLINE, Scopus, and ProQuest.

The impact of mass casualty incidents on intensive care units.

Objectives: Mass casualty incidents occur worldwide and have the capacity to overwhelm local healthcare facilities. There has been much research into how these events are managed in the prehospital environment and in the emergency department. However, there is a paucity in research addressing the impact that mass casualty incidents have on adult intensive care units.

Analogues with fluorescent leaving groups for screening and selection of enzymes that efficiently hydrolyze organophosphorus nerve agents.

Enzymes that efficiently hydrolyze highly toxic organophosphorus nerve agents could potentially be used as medical countermeasures. As sufficiently active enzymes are currently unknown, we synthesized twelve fluorogenic analogues of organophosphorus nerve agents with the 3-chloro-7-oxy-4-methylcoumarin leaving group as probes for high-throughput enzyme screening. This set included analogues of the pesticides paraoxon, parathion, and dimefox, and the nerve agents DFP, tabun, sarin, cyclosarin, soman, VX, and Russian-VX.

Simplified kinetic analysis of tumor 18F-FDG uptake: a dynamic approach.

Unlabelled: Standardized uptake value (SUV) is often used to quantify (18)F-FDG tumor use. Although useful, SUV suffers from known quantitative inaccuracies. Simplified kinetic analysis (SKA) methods have been proposed to overcome the shortcomings of SUV.

Using positron emission tomography 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose, 11CO, and 15O-water for monitoring androgen independent prostate cancer.

Purpose: Monitoring of androgen independent prostate cancer (AIPC) therapy involves monitoring prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood serum concentrations; however, the reliability of small changes in PSA values has been questioned. We performed a small pilot study to determine whether PET might be a useful monitor of changes during anti-angiogenic therapy in AIPC.

Procedures: Changes in tumor blood flow ([15O] water), blood volume ([11C]CO), 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) uptake and metabolic volume were measured before and during thalidomide treatment and compared with changes in PSA in six patients with AIPC.

Line staff use of the behavioral observation system: assessment of depression scale validity and cut scores.

The Behavioral Observation System (BOS) is an objective behavioral tool used by non-degreed line staff to assess depression, mania, psychosis, and acting out in psychiatric inpatients. The current study uses the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)-1A to provide evidence for convergent validity for the BOS Depression Scale and to determine effective cut-scores to assist in BOS interpretation. Findings support substantial correlational agreement between the BOS Depression Scale and the BDI.

Comparison of SUV and Patlak slope for monitoring of cancer therapy using serial PET scans.

The standardized uptake value (SUV) and the slope of the Patlak plot ( K) have both been proposed as indices to monitor the progress of disease during cancer therapy. Although a good correlation has been reported between SUV and K, they are not equivalent, and may not be equally affected by metabolic changes occurring during disease progression or therapy. We wished to compare changes in tumor SUV with changes in K during serial positron emission tomography (PET) scans for monitoring therapy.