Purpose: Regionalization and concentration of critical care increases the need for interhospital transport. However, optimal staffing of ground critical care transport has not been evaluated.
Methods: In this prospective, randomized, open-label, blinded-endpoint non-inferiority trial, critically ill patients on mechanical ventilation transported by interhospital ground critical care transport were randomized between transport staffed by a dedicated team comprising a critical care nurse and paramedic (nurses group) or a dedicated team including a critical care physician (nurses + physician group).
Background: The discharge letter is the primary means of communication at patient discharge, yet discharge letters are often not completed on time. A multifaceted intervention was performed to improve communication in patient hand-off from the intensive care unit (ICU) to the wards by improving the timeliness of discharge letters.
Methods: A management directive was operationalised by a working group of ICU staff in a longitudinal before-after study.
Context: Health care applications of autoidentification technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID), have been proposed to improve patient safety and also the tracking and tracing of medical equipment. However, electromagnetic interference (EMI) by RFID on medical devices has never been reported.
Objective: To assess and classify incidents of EMI by RFID on critical care equipment.
Objective: This study assessed the relative importance of clinical and transport-related factors in physicians' decision-making regarding the interhospital transport of critically ill patients.
Methods: The medical heads of all 95 ICUs in The Netherlands were surveyed with a questionnaire using 16 case vignettes to evaluate preferences for transportability; 78 physicians (82%) participated. The vignettes varied in eight factors with regard to severity of illness and transport conditions.
Objective: To investigate the agreement among clinical experts in their judgments of monitoring data with respect to artifacts, and to examine the effect of reference standards that consist of individual and joint expert judgments on the performance of artifact filters.
Design: Individual judgments of four physicians, a majority vote judgment, and a consensus judgment were obtained for 30 time series of three monitoring variables: mean arterial blood pressure (ABPm), central venous pressure (CVP), and heart rate (HR). The individual and joint judgments were used to tune three existing automated filtering methods and to evaluate the performance of the resulting filters.
Introduction: The aim of the study was to assess and classify incidents of electromagnetic interference (EMI) by second-generation and third-generation mobile phones on critical care medical equipment.
Methods: EMI was assessed with two General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) signals (900 MHz, 2 W, two different time-slot occupations) and one Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) signal (1,947.2 MHz, 0.
The proper understanding of the cardiovascular mechanisms involved in complaints of short-lasting dizziness and the evaluation of unexplained recurrent syncope requires continuous monitoring of cardiac stroke volume (SV) in addition to blood pressure and heart rate. The primary aim of the present study was to evaluate a pulse wave analysis method that calculates beat-to-beat flow from non-invasive arterial pressure by simulating a non-linear, time-varying model of human aortic input impedance (Modelflow; MF), by comparing MF stroke volume (SV(MF)) to Doppler ultrasound (US) flow velocity SV (SV(US)). A second purpose was to compare the two methods under two different conditions: the supine and head-up tilt (30 degrees ) position.
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