Publications by authors named "Pietsch Urs"

Background: The handover and associated shift start checks by nurses of critical care patients are complex and prone to errors. However, which aspects lead to errors remains unknown. Fewer errors might occur in a structured approach.

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Background: Prehospital point-of-care ultrasound allows an unstable patient to be rapidly and accurately assessed. However, we are concerned that an excessive focus on the ultrasound device, in an already demanding emergency medical service environment, may distract from patient care, potentially leading to reduced situational awareness and the neglect of other crucial instruments, such as the patient monitor. Thus, in this study, we examined the influence of prehospital ultrasound on situational awareness, by studying the degree to which physicians were distracted from the patient monitor.

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Importance: Survival probability among individuals critically buried by avalanche is highly time dependent, which was demonstrated 30 years ago. However, it remains unclear whether avalanche survival probability has changed over time.

Objective: To assess the avalanche survival rate and probability as well as the rescue probability over the past 4 decades.

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Background: Trauma poses a significant global health challenge. Despite advancements in the management of severely injured patients, (poly)trauma continues to be a primary contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the context of trauma resuscitation, supplemental oxygen is commonly administered generously as suggested by guidelines.

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Objectives: Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is a major driver of morbidity after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Quantitative pupillometry has been shown to be of prognostic value after acute neurological injury. However, the evidence for the use of pupillometric features for the detection of DCI has been conflicting.

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The purpose of this study was to compare a wearable system for body core temperature measurement versus bladder and tympanic thermometers in an intensive care setting. The question was, if continuous non-invasive sensors in the intensive care unit represent an alternative to current standard methods of invasive continuous bladder temperature measurement methods?Between May and September 2023, a comparative investigation involving 112 patients was conducted in a 20-bed surgical intensive care unit to assess various temperature probes, including those placed in the tympanic tube, bladder, and skin. To achieve this, a wireless non-invasive sensor system provided by greenTEG AG, Switzerland, was affixed to different body locations (clavicular and lateral chest) of each catheterized patient (equipped with a temperature probe) admitted to the intensive care unit.

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Importance: Adequate situational awareness in patient care increases patient safety and quality of care. To improve situational awareness, an innovative, low-fidelity simulation method referred to as Room of Improvement, has proven effective in various clinical settings.

Objective: To investigate the impact after 3 months of Room of Improvement training on the ability to detect patient safety hazards during an intensive care unit shift handover, based on critical incident reporting system (CIRS) cases reported in the same hospital.

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Purpose: For optimal prehospital trauma care, it is essential to adequately recognize potential life-threatening injuries in order to correctly triage patients and to initiate life-saving measures. The aim of the present study was to determine the accuracy of prehospital diagnoses suspected by helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS).

Methods: This retrospective multicenter study included patients from the Swiss Trauma Registry with ISS ≥ 16 or AIS head ≥ 3 transported by Switzerland's largest HEMS and subsequently admitted to one of twelve Swiss trauma centers from 01/2020 to 12/2020.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated whether volatile sedation with sevoflurane could protect organs in patients with severe COVID-19 lung injury experiencing a cytokine storm, particularly focusing on IL-6 levels.
  • Conducted as a pilot trial in Switzerland, 60 patients requiring mechanical ventilation were randomly assigned to receive either sevoflurane or continuous intravenous sedation, with their outcomes analyzed at 28 days.
  • Results showed no significant difference in primary outcomes such as mortality or persistent organ dysfunction between the two groups, but the sevoflurane group required fewer vasopressors and had higher reported acute kidney injury rates compared to controls.
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Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in children is rare and can potentially result in severe neurological impairment. Our study aimed to identify characteristics of and factors associated with favourable neurological outcome following the resuscitation of children by the Swiss helicopter emergency medical service.

Materials And Methods: This retrospective observational study screened the Swiss Air-Ambulance electronic database from 01-01-2011 to 31-12-2021.

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Background: The role of autoreactive T cells on the course of Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) remains elusive. Type II pneumocytes represent the main target cells of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Autoimmune responses against antigens highly expressed in type II pneumocytes may influence the severity of COVID-19 disease.

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Background: Fluid overload is associated with excess mortality in septic shock. Current approaches to reduce fluid overload include restrictive administration of fluid or active removal of accumulated fluid. However, evidence on active fluid removal is scarce.

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Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains one of the main causes of mortality and long-term disability worldwide. Maintaining physiology of brain tissue to the greatest extent possible through optimal management of blood pressure, airway, ventilation, and oxygenation, improves patient outcome. We studied the quality of prehospital care in severe TBI patients by analyzing adherence to recommended target ranges for ventilation and blood pressure, prehospital time expenditure, and their effect on mortality, as well as quality of prehospital ventilation assessed by arterial partial pressure of CO (PaCO) at hospital admission.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to see how a special education program could help doctors check for pain, agitation, and delirium (PAD) in patients in intensive care units.
  • They included 430 patients from 12 hospitals in four countries and provided 6 weeks of online lessons and hands-on training.
  • After one year, the results showed that more patients were getting checked for PAD, especially for delirium and pain, compared to before the training.
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COVID-19, a systemic multi-organ disease resulting from infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is known to result in a wide array of disease outcomes, ranging from asymptomatic to fatal. Despite persistent progress, there is a continued need for more accurate determinants of disease outcomes, including post-acute symptoms after COVID-19. In this study, we characterised the serum metabolomic changes due to hospitalisation and COVID-19 disease progression by mapping the serum metabolomic trajectories of 71 newly hospitalised moderate and severe patients in their first week after hospitalisation.

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Background: Trauma related deaths remain a relevant public health problem, in particular in the younger male population. A significant number of these deaths occur prehospitally without transfer to a hospital. These patients, sometimes termed "the forgotten cohort", are usually not included in clinical registries, resulting in a lack of information about prehospitally trauma deaths.

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Introduction: Little is known about intraoperative cardiac arrest during anesthesia care. In particular, data on characteristics of cardiac arrest and neurological survival are scarce.

Methods: We conducted a single-center retrospective observational study evaluating anesthetic procedures from January 2015 until December 2021.

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Background: For helicopter emergency service systems (HEMS), the prehospital time consists of response time, on-scene time and transport time. Little is known about the factors that influence on-scene time or about differences between adult and paediatric missions in a physician-staffed HEMS.

Methods: We analysed the HEMS electronic database of Swiss Air-Rescue from 01-01-2011 to 31-12-2021 (N = 110,331).

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Background: Pain is one of the major prehospital symptoms in trauma patients and requires prompt management. Recent studies have reported insufficient analgesia after prehospital treatment in up to 43% of trauma patients, leaving significant room for improvement. Good evidence exists for prehospital use of oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate (OTFC) in the military setting.

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Study Objective: Drugs stored in rescue helicopters may be subject to extreme environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to measure whether drugs stored under the real-life conditions of a Swiss helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) would retain their potency over the course of 1 year.

Methods: A prospective, longitudinal study measuring the temperature exposure and concentration of drugs stored on 2 rescue helicopters in Switzerland over 1 year.

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Background: It remains elusive how the characteristics, the course of disease, the clinical management and the outcomes of critically ill COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) worldwide have changed over the course of the pandemic.

Methods: Prospective, observational registry constituted by 90 ICUs across 22 countries worldwide including patients with a laboratory-confirmed, critical presentation of COVID-19 requiring advanced organ support. Hierarchical, generalized linear mixed-effect models accounting for hospital and country variability were employed to analyse the continuous evolution of the studied variables over the pandemic.

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