Communication with Families Regarding Organ and Tissue Donation after Death in Intensive Care (COMFORT): a multicentre before-and-after study.

Objective: To implement a best-practice intervention offering deceased organ donation, testing whether it increased family consent rates.

Design: A multicentre before-and-after study of a prospective cohort compared with pre-intervention controls.

Setting: Nine Australian intensive care units.

COMmunication with Families regarding ORgan and Tissue donation after death in intensive care (COMFORT): protocol for an intervention study.

Background: Discussing deceased organ donation can be difficult not only for families but for health professionals who initiate and manage the conversations. It is well recognised that the methods of communication and communication skills of health professionals are key influences on decisions made by families regarding organ donation.

Methods: This multicentre study is being performed in nine intensive care units with follow-up conducted by the Organ and Tissue Donation Service in New South Wales (NSW) Australia.

Withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies in intensive care: an Australian experience.

Objectives: Withholding and withdrawal of treatment in intensive care is currently widely accepted, but little has been published about Australian practice.

Design And Setting: Retrospective audit of all deaths in two major tertiary intensive care units in the Hunter New England Area Health Service during 2008. Patients who died were classified as "no limitations" (died while receiving full treatment), "treatments withheld" (specific treatment limitations) or "withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment" (WLST).

Prediction of death after withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments.

Objective: To assess the predictive value of respiratory and haemodynamic variables and opinion of the intensivist for determining how soon death occurs after withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments (WLST).

Design: Multicentre prospective observational study.

Participants And Setting: 83 consecutive adult intensive care patients at John Hunter and Calvary Mater Hospitals, Newcastle, New South Wales, for whom a decision was made to withdraw life-sustaining treatment between March 2007 and March 2008.

Nongenomic actions of glucocorticosteroids on the airway vasculature in asthma.

Inhaled glucocorticosteroids (corticosteroids) continue to be the standard treatment for nonexacerbated asthma because of their anti-inflammatory actions. These include effects on the airway vasculature, which participates in the inflammatory process. Corticosteroids are now known to have genomic as well as nongenomic effects that involve different mechanisms of action.