A Rare Case of Severe Metabolic Alkalosis with Unusual Hyperproteinemia Treated with Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy and Regional Citrate Anticoagulation.

A 23-year-old woman was referred to the tertiary centre with acute kidney injury and severe metabolic alkalosis following an accidental ethylene glycol poisoning. The patient had been treated with continuous haemodiafiltration and regional citrate anticoagulation, and a tracheostomy was performed due to pneumonia. Besides severe metabolic alkalosis and hypernatremia, the laboratory tests revealed total protein of 108 g/L on admission to the tertiary centre.

Role of linezolid in the treatment of resistant gram-positive infections.

Incidence of Gram-positive infections caused by bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics has increased in the last decades. Resistant strains appeared later in the Czech Republic, however their number has been increasing and new antibiotics have to be used. The greatest increase of frequency can be seen in infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci.

Expression profiling: toward an application in sepsis diagnostics.

Sepsis is a common and serious health problem whereby improvements in diagnosis are crucial in increasing survival rates. To test whether profiling transcription is applicable to sepsis diagnosis, we analyzed whole blood using a microarray containing probes for 340 genes relevant to inflammation. The patient's gene expression pattern was highly homogenous, resulting in 69% of differentially expressed genes.

Significance of lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (an acute phase protein) in monitoring critically ill patients.

Introduction: The present study was conducted to assess the value of serum concentration of lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) in patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), sepsis and septic shock with respect to its ability to differentiate between infectious and noninfectious etiologies in SIRS and to predict prognosis.

Methods: This prospective cohort study was conducted in a multidisciplinary intensive care unit. Sixty-eight patients, admitted consecutively to the intensive care unit and who met criteria for SIRS, sepsis or septic shock were included.