Brief description of media:

Long Covid is characterised by a variety of physiological and psychological issues, including fatigue, breathlessness, cognitive blunting (‘brain fog’) and pain.
Christine Husbands, Managing Director for UK healthcare company RedArc, said: “This is clearly an emerging situation and one which is likely to be challenging for insurers, in terms of dealing with claims and underwriting for this new relatively unknown condition and its long-term implications. Offering practical help and emotional support for those diagnosed with the condition will help ensure the right people receive the best possible support for their individual symptoms, as well as helping to reduce the potential size and incidence of claims for the condition.”

Brief description of media:

In the power point, the author explained the long-term cognitive impairment, delirium and how to prevent them using the ABCDE bundle.

Brief description of media:

or many years, we believed that a good outcome for critically ill patients was for them to leave the intensive care unit (ICU) alive. Sadly, we now know from substantial research, including in-depth follow-up of individual patients, that this is not the case.

Many cohort studies of critically ill patients that prospectively followed people after hospital discharge raised concerns regarding long-term outcomes (1–4). Despite the importance of this work, such prospective cohort studies are limited in the type and amount of information they can provide because of small sample size or number of outcome events, uncertain generalizability, and a lack of information on prehospital trajectories. Perhaps most important, many of these exploratory studies lacked comparison with appropriate controls. Therefore, the burden of morbidity and mortality after critical illness was quantified, but with uncertainty regarding the level of attribution to the critical illness and its associated treatments and the contribution of either underlying comorbidity or hospitalization of any kind. In effect, these studies identified that “we have a problem,” but their limitations did not allow us to more fully understand the severity, duration, causation, and trajectory of these problems from the perspectives of our patients and our health systems.

Brief description of media:

Economic evaluations of interventions in the hospital setting often rely on the estimated long term impact on patient survival. Estimates of mortality rates and long-term outcomes among patients discharged alive from the intensive care unit (ICU) are lacking from lower- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to assess the long-term survival and life expectancy (LE) amongst post-ICU patients in Thailand, a middle-income country.

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This post is Part 2 of a series on ICU trauma and how to cope.
Read Part 1 here: The Psychological Trauma of Having a Loved One in the ICU, by Maureen O'Reilly-Landry, Ph.D.
Read Part 3 here: Managing Emotional Distress in the Hospital and ICU by Ethan Lester, Ph.D.
Read Part 4 here: What Can I Do if My Family Member is in the COVID ICU? by Irina Wen, Ph.D.
This post describes a program created prior to COVID that has been helping ICU patients and their families to cope.
The symptoms of COVID-19 are often serious and can produce lasting physical and psychological impact. For those patients hospitalized, more than half of them require assistance with oxygen due to difficulties breathing, and those who continue to decline require admission to an intensive care unit (ICU).
Critical care hospitalizations are known to produce heightened emotional distress (depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress) in both patients and families (described as post-intensive care syndrome); and may persist long after ICU discharge.

Brief description of media:

Successful management of malignant hyperthermia depends upon early diagnosis and treatment; onset can be within minutes of induction or may be insidious. The standard operating procedure below is intended to ease the burden of managing this rare but life threatening emergency. This guideline is not a standard of medical care. The ultimate judgement with regard to a particular clinical procedure or treatment plan must be made by the clinician in the light of the clinical data presented and the diagnostic and treatment options available.

Brief description of media:

This new supplementary guidance from the RCP will help clinicians manage patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC - which includes vegetative state (VS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) but not short-term coma) who have had a tracheostomy.

The guidance takes into account the requirements to protect patients and staff from the risks of acquiring COVID-19. and supplements Prolonged disorders of consciousness following sudden onset brain injury: National clinical guidelines published in March 2020.

Brief description of media:

Each year, hundreds of thousands of patients in the U.S. and millions
worldwide become critically ill. Patients who require care in the
intensive care unit (ICU) have the most serious illnesses, often requiring
multiple forms of life support. While the science of medicine has
significantly advanced in the past 30 years, these advances sometimes
create many questions, such as:
• Will my loved one be able to live independently after this?
• What kind of rehabilitation will my loved one need?
• What will my loved one’s quality of life be after this illness?
More than ever, medical teams rely on families to help them make
important decisions about their loved ones’ care, and their futures.
The purpose of this series is built on the ideas that knowledge is power
and that every patient needs an advocate. Here, we share some of the
most important advances in ICU medicine so patients and their families
can ask educated questions.

Brief description of media:

Each year, hundreds of thousands of patients in the U.S. and millions worldwide become critically ill. Patients who require care in the intensive care unit (ICU) have the most serious illnesses, often requiring multiple forms of life support. While the science of medicine has significantly advanced in the past 30 years, these advances sometimes create many questions, such as:
• Will my loved one be able to live independently after this?
• What kind of rehabilitation will my loved one need?
• What will my loved one’s quality of life be after this illness?
More than ever, medical teams rely on families to help them make important decisions about their loved ones’ care, and their futures. The purpose of this series is built on the ideas that knowledge is power and that every patient needs an advocate. Here, we share some of the most important advances in ICU medicine so patients and their families can ask educated questions.

Brief description of media:

BACKGROUND:

Patients with brain tumour usually suffer from increased pressure in the skull due to swelling of brain tissue. A swollen brain renders surgical removal of the brain tumour difficult. To ease surgical tumour removal, measures are taken to reduce brain swelling, often referred to as brain relaxation. Brain relaxation can be achieved with intravenous fluids such as mannitol or hypertonic saline. This review was conducted to find out which of the two fluids may have a greater impact on brain relaxation.

OBJECTIVES:

To compare the effects of mannitol versus those of hypertonic saline on intraoperative brain relaxation in patients undergoing craniotomy.

Brief description of media:

Background
Patients with brain tumour usually suffer from increased pressure in the skull due to swelling of brain tissue. A swollen brain renders surgical removal of the brain tumour difficult. To ease surgical tumour removal, measures are taken to reduce brain swelling, often referred to as brain relaxation. Brain relaxation can be achieved with intravenous fluids such as mannitol or hypertonic saline. This review was conducted to find out which of the two fluids may have a greater impact on brain relaxation.
Objectives
The objective of this review was to compare the effects of mannitol versus those of hypertonic saline on intraoperative brain relaxation in patients undergoing craniotomy.

Brief description of media:

COVID-19 may lead to severe acute respiratory dis-tress syndrome requiring intensive care unit (ICU) sup-port. Patients surviving respiratory distress could develop post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) that includes ICU-acquired weakness (ICUAW). Nearly 66% ofCOVID-19 patients have clinically important muscle weakness following discharge [1]. Therefore, communication between the critical care and rehabilitation physician is important to evaluate the physical function ofCOVID-19 survivors to start rehabilitation timely.