[Intensive care services resources in Spain].

Objectives: To identify the resources related to the care of critically ill patients in Spain, which are available in the units dependent of the Services of Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) or other services/specialties, analyzing their distribution according to characteristics of the hospitals and by autonomous communities.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: Spanish hospitals.

The future of intensive care medicine.

Intensive care medical training, whether as a primary specialty or as secondary add-on training, should include key competences to ensure a uniform standard of care, and the number of intensive care physicians needs to increase to keep pace with the growing and anticipated need. The organisation of intensive care in multiple specialty or central units is heterogeneous and evolving, but appropriate early treatment and access to a trained intensivist should be assured at all times, and intensivists should play a pivotal role in ensuring communication and high-quality care across hospital departments. Structures now exist to support clinical research in intensive care medicine, which should become part of routine patient management.

[Current status of fibreoptic bronchoscopy in intensive care medicine].

Flexible bronchoscopy (FB) has been of great help in the management of critically ill patients. Its safety and usefulness in the hands of experienced professionals, with the required measures of caution, has resulted in the increasingly widespread use of the technique even in unstable critical patients subjected to mechanical ventilation and with high oxygen demands. The Spanish Society of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine and Coronary Units (SEMICYUC), through its Acute Respiratory Failure (GT-IRA) and Infectious Diseases (GT-EI) Work Groups, aims to promote knowledge and standards of quality in the use of FB among all specialists in Intensive Care Medicine.

[Reduction in 28 days and 6 months of acute myocardial infarction mortality from 1995 to 2005. Data from PRIAMHO I, II and MASCARA registries].

Introduction And Objectives: To determine whether mortality from acute myocardial infarction has reduced in Spain and the possibly related therapeutic factors.

Methods: Nine thousand, nine hundred and forty-nine patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction admitted to the Coronary Care Unit were identified from PRIAMHO I, II and MASCARA registries performed in 1995, 2000 and 2005, with a 6 month follow-up.

Results: From 1995 to 2005 patients were increasingly more likely to have hypertension, hyperlipidemia and anterior infarction, but age of onset and the proportion of females did not increase.