Determinants of post-intensive care mortality in high-level treated critically ill patients.

Objective: To assess the predictive ability of preillness and illness variables, impact of care, and discharge variables on the post-intensive care mortality.

Setting And Patients: 5,805 patients treated with high intensity of care in 89 ICUs in 12 European countries (EURICUS-I study) surviving ICU stay.

Methods: Case-mix was split in training sample (logistic regression model for post-ICU mortality: discrimination assessed by area under ROC curve) and in testing sample.

[Post-infectious glomerulonephritis].

Post-infectious glomerulonephrites (GNs) include a wide spectrum of nephropathies, with known etiological agent, bacterial, parasitic, viral. Among GNs secondary to bacterial infections, post-streptococcal GN is the most frequent; nevertheless, its incidence in developed countries has decreased during the last 20 years, while some of the characteristics such as types of infection, exposed subjects, clinical and evolutionary patterns have changed. Prognosis has worsened and is correlated with some clinical and histological parameters.

Description of trends in the course of illness of critically ill patients. Markers of intensive care organization and performance.

Objective: To identify objective trends of the course of illness that might be used as benchmarks in the auditing of the organization/performance of Intensive Care Units (ICU).

Design: Retrospective analysis.

Patients And Setting: A group of 12,615 patients and 55,464 patient-days prospectively collected in 89 ICUs of 12 European countries.

[Borderline indications for renal biopsy].

The Authors report 3 cases with clinical renal manifestations where the indication to perform a renal biopsy was defined as borderline. The uncertain indication was related to the clinical presentation, with a pattern of urinary abnormalities, such as isolated microscopic hematuria, microscopic hematuria associated with mild proteinuria, and isolated proteinuria. In addition, similar questions on biopsy are raised for chronic renal failure and elderly patients.

Oral type II collagen in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A six-month double blind placebo-controlled study.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of oral chicken type II collagen (CII) in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: Sixty patients with clinically active RA of long duration (mean 7.2 +/- 5.

Left ventricular volume reduction for end-stage heart disease.

Partial left ventriculectomy (PLV) was recently introduced for end-stage dilated cardiomyopathy to improve ventricular function. Since November 1996 we have performed PLV in 14 patients; preoperatively 4 patients had idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy and 10 had ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy. 57.

Periodic breathing during sleep in patients affected by fibromyalgia syndrome.

Seventeen patients affected by fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) (16 females and one male) and 17 matched healthy subjects underwent formal polysomnography, a sleep questionnaire and lung function tests. FMS patients slept significantly less efficiently than the healthy controls (p<0.01), had a higher proportion of stage 1 sleep (mean+/-SD, 21+/-6% versus 11+/-4%; p<0.