Effect of critical illness polyneuropathy on the withdrawal from mechanical ventilation and the length of stay in septic patients.

Objectives: No previous study has demonstrated whether critical illness polyneuropathy itself lengthens mechanical ventilation or whether this prolonged duration of ventilatory support is explained by concomitant risk factors for weaning failure. Our objectives were to evaluate the impact of critical illness polyneuropathy on the length of mechanical ventilation after controlling for coexisting risk factors for weaning failure and to assess the impact of critical illness polyneuropathy on the length of the stay in a cohort of septic patients.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Steroid-induced myopathy in patients intubated due to exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Objective: To determine incidence, risk factors and impact on various outcome parameters of the development of acute quadriplegic myopathy in a selected population of critically ill patients.

Setting: A prospective cohort study carried out in the intensive care unit of a tertiary-level university hospital.

Patients: All patients admitted due to acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who required intubation and mechanical ventilation, and received high doses of intravenous corticosteroids.

Treatment of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) with intravenous colistin: a comparison with imipenem-susceptible VAP.

We prospectively evaluated the efficacy and toxicity of intravenously administered colistin in 35 episodes of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) due to multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Microbiological diagnosis was performed with use of quantitative culture. In 21 patients, the episodes were caused by a strain susceptible exclusively to colistin (the CO group) and were all treated with this antimicrobial intravenously.

Critical illness polyneuropathy: risk factors and clinical consequences. A cohort study in septic patients.

Objective: To determine risk factors and clinical consequences of critical illness polyneuropathy (CIP) evaluated by the impact on duration of mechanical ventilation, length of stay and mortality.

Design: Inception cohort study.

Setting: Intensive care unit of a tertiary hospital.

[Abdominal respiratory muscle activity in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].

With the purpose of defining the pattern of abdominal respiratory muscle activity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), we studied the electromyogram of the rectus abdominis (RA), the external oblique (EO) and transversus (TM) muscles in 14 patients with different degrees of airways obstruction (FEV1: 41 +/- 12%; FEV1/FVC: 45 +/- 10%; RV: 198 +/- 38%; PaO2: 75.8 +/- 12 y PaCO2: 41.4 +/- 5.