Cytopathology of bronchoalveolar lavages in COVID___19 pneumonia: A pilot study.

Background: Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) in patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may provide additional and complementary findings for the management of these patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). This study addresses the cytological features of the infection and highlights the more influential inflammatory components. The correlation between pathological variables and clinical data is also analyzed.

Effects of Clonidine on the Cardiovascular, Renal, and Inflammatory Responses to Experimental Bacteremia.

Introduction: Supra-clinical doses of clonidine appear beneficial in experimental sepsis, but there is limited understanding of the effects of clonidine at clinically relevant doses.

Methods: In conscious sheep, with implanted renal and pulmonary artery flow probes, sepsis was induced by infusion of live Escherichia coli. At 24 h, a high clinical dose of clonidine (HCDC) [1.

Perioperative Hemodynamic Instability and Fluid Overload are Associated with Increasing Acute Kidney Injury Severity and Worse Outcome after Cardiac Surgery.

Purpose: The study aimed to investigate patients' characteristics, fluid and hemodynamic management, and outcomes according to the severity of cardiac surgery-associated acute kidney injury (CSA-AKI).

Methods: In a single-center, prospective cohort study, we enrolled 282 adult cardiac surgical patients. In a secondary analysis, we assessed preoperative patients' characteristics, physiological variables, and medication for intra- and postoperative fluid and hemodynamic management and outcomes according to CSA-AKI stages by the Renal risk, Injury, Failure, Loss, End-stage renal disease (RIFLE) classification.

Variable responses of regional renal oxygenation and perfusion to vasoactive agents in awake sheep.

Vasoactive agents are used in critical care to optimize circulatory function, but their effects on renal tissue oxygenation in the absence of anesthesia remain largely unknown. Therefore, we assessed the effects of multiple vasoactive agents on regional kidney oxygenation in awake sheep. Sheep were surgically instrumented with pulmonary and renal artery flow probes, and combination fiber-optic probes, in the renal cortex and medulla, comprising a fluorescence optode to measure tissue Po2 and a laser-Doppler probe to assess tissue perfusion.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound evaluation of renal microcirculation in sheep.

Background: Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) is a novel imaging modality to estimate microvascular perfusion. We aimed to assess renal cortical microcirculatory changes by CEUS during pharmacologically or mechanically induced modifications of renal blood flow (RBF) in experimental animals.

Methods: We implanted invasive transit-time Doppler flow probes and a vascular occluder around the renal artery in six Merino sheep.