Pre-hospital use of inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists and incidence of ARDS: A population-based study.

Objective: Inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists were shown to decrease the lung injury in animal models. We investigated the association of pre-hospital use of inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists with the incidence of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) in a population based cohort of hospitalized patients.

Material And Methods: Retrospective cohort study of adult patients from Olmsted County, Minnesota admitted to the hospital with at least one predisposing condition for ARDS from 2001-2008.

Tips and tricks for MR angiography of pediatric and adult congenital cardiovascular diseases.

Objective: The use of contrast-enhanced MR angiography (MRA) as an alternative to CT angiography or conventional angiography to assess pediatric and adult patients with cardiovascular diseases has the potential to significantly reduce patients' lifetime exposure to ionizing radiation. However, imaging this group of patients can be challenging because of a number of factors, including small size, difficulty timing the contrast bolus to the territory of interest, and the presence of metallic susceptibility artifact resulting from stents or clips.

Conclusion: We present some suggestions to overcome many of these obstacles to MRA in these patients, highlighted with illustrations from clinical cases.

Enrollment into a time sensitive clinical study in the critical care setting: results from computerized septic shock sniffer implementation.

Objective: Recruitment of patients into time sensitive clinical trials in intensive care units (ICU) poses a significant challenge. Enrollment is limited by delayed recognition and late notification of research personnel. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of electronic screening (septic shock sniffer) regarding enrollment into a time sensitive (24 h after onset) clinical study of echocardiography in severe sepsis and septic shock.

Alcohol consumption and development of acute respiratory distress syndrome: a population-based study.

This retrospective population-based study evaluated the effects of alcohol consumption on the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Alcohol consumption was quantified based on patient and/or family provided information at the time of hospital admission. ARDS was defined according to American-European consensus conference (AECC).