Outcome of patients undergoing prolonged mechanical ventilation after critical illness.

Objective: To examine the longitudinal outcome of a cohort of mechanically ventilated patients admitted to an acute care respiratory unit after critical illness.

Design, Setting, And Patients: Prospective, observational study of 210 consecutive patients admitted to a respiratory unit of an acute, tertiary care university hospital, who had an acute critical illness with respiratory failure. The study was powered to develop multivariate regression models to investigate the relationship between patient characteristics and a) liberation from mechanical ventilation and b) survival.

Outcome of postoperative critically ill patients with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia: an observational retrospective case-control study.

Introduction: Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is described as a decrease in platelet count associated with heparin administration and is an immune-mediated adverse drug reaction that can cause both arterial and venous thromboses. It can be a life-threatening complication of heparin exposure. Little data concerning incidence, predisposing factors, or outcome in critically ill surgical patients are available.

Hemodynamic monitoring in obese patients: the impact of body mass index on cardiac output and stroke volume.

Objective: Interpreting hemodynamic parameters in critically ill obese patients can be difficult as the effects of body mass index (BMI) on cardiac output (CO) and stroke volume (SV) at the extremes of body size remains unknown. We examined the relationship between BMI and both CO and SV for patients with varying body sizes.

Design: Retrospective cohort analysis.