[Interventional Patient Hygiene Model. A critical reflection on basic nursing care in intensive care units].

Interventional Patient Hygiene Model. A critical reflection on basic nursing care in intensive care units. Over the past 15 years, the model of medical and nursing care changed from being exclusively oriented to the diagnosis and treatment of acute illness, to the achievement of outcomes by preventing iatrogenic complications (Hospital Acquired Conditions).

Outpatient intensive care unit follow-up services in Italy: a national survey: a brief report.

This is a brief report of a national Italian survey about the presence and the way of management of outpatient follow-up services for patients who survived in the intensive care unit and after discharge from the hospital.

Early intra-intensive care unit psychological intervention promotes recovery from post traumatic stress disorders, anxiety and depression symptoms in critically ill patients.

Introduction: Critically ill patients who require intensive care unit (ICU) treatment may experience psychological distress with increasing development of psychological disorders and related morbidity. Our aim was to determine whether intra-ICU clinical psychologist interventions decrease the prevalence of anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after 12 months from ICU discharge.

Methods: Our observational study included critical patients admitted before clinical psychologist intervention (control group) and patients who were involved in a clinical psychologist program (intervention group).

Early spontaneous improvement and deterioration of ischemic stroke patients. A serial study with transcranial Doppler ultrasonography.

Background And Purpose: The purpose of our study was to investigate whether emergency transcranial Doppler (TCD) findings and their modifications over the first 48 hours are related to early neurological changes in acute ischemic stroke patients.

Methods: Ninety-three patients underwent CT scan within 5 hours of a first-ever ischemic hemispheric stroke, and TCD serial examinations at 6, 24, and 48 hours after stroke onset. We classified TCD findings as follows: normal; middle cerebral artery (MCA) asymmetry (asymmetry index between affected and contralateral MCAs below -21%); and MCA no-flow (absence of flow signal from the affected MCA in the presence of ipsilateral anterior and posterior cerebral artery signals through the same acoustic window).

Patent foramen ovale and transcranial Doppler. Comparison of different procedures.

Background And Purpose: The capability of transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) to detect a patent foramen ovale (PFO) has been established. However, which provocative maneuver and what timing of contrast injection are most effective to induce a right-to-left shunt has not yet been determined.

Methods: We selected 38 cerebrovascular patients (21 men, 17 women) with positive contrast study for PFO on transesophageal echocardiography.

Microembolization from a carotid mural thrombus detected by transcranial Doppler.

Over the last few years, many authors have described the possibility of using transcranial Doppler to demonstrate the passage of microemboli in the cerebral arteries. We report the case of a 44-year-old woman with thrombotic diathesis and thrombocytosis who was admitted twice within a short period of time (one and a half months) to a neurological department because of multiple cerebral infarctions. On the occasion of the second admission, a colour-Doppler examination of the epiaortic vessels, which had previously been negative, showed a carotid lesion due to a mural thrombus and, on the same side as the carotid lesion, transcranial Doppler detected short-duration, high-intensity signals in the middle and anterior cerebral arteries, an expression of the passage of microemboli.