Critical Care Commentary
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Navigating AI’s emerging role in critical care
AI tools like OpenEvidence are changing the way critical care clinicians learn, study, and practice medicine in the ICU setting.
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Practice-changing updates in neurocritical care
Review practice-changing updates in neurocritical care, including the risk of pneumonia in patients with ABI who are mechanically ventilated, the use of prophylactic antibiotics, how to extubate patients with ABI, and more.
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Shock resuscitation: Making the first 30 minutes count
Physician-educators share their approach to teaching shock recognition and management core skills to residents at the bedside.
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Ketamine vs etomidate for intubation in patients who are critically ill
Commonly used for sedation for endotracheal intubation, these drugs are often selected for their favorable hemodynamic profiles.
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Sepsis order sets good for patients, hospital bottom lines
Automating the mundane components of care delivery allows clinicians to focus more on the nuances of individualized evaluation and personalized care.
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Biomarker use in ARDS resulting from COVID-19 infection
There is renewed interest in the use of immunomodulatory therapies in patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure. Multiple investigations during the course of the pandemic demonstrated that dexamethasone administration improved mortality in patients with severe COVID-19.
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The language of AI and its applications in health care
The respiratory community is interested in artificial intelligence (AI) because it can improve the effectiveness of our care delivery processes. AI is a group of nonhuman techniques that utilize automated learning methods to extract information from datasets through generalization, classification, prediction, and association. In other words, AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by…
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Use of albumin in critically ill patients
Intravenous albumin is a human-derived blood product studied widely in a variety of patient populations. Despite its frequent use in critical care, few high-quality studies have demonstrated improvements in patient-important outcomes. It is important for intensivists to think critically about prescribing albumin and individualize the prescription for each patient, as albumin use is not without…
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Hospital-onset sepsis: Why the brouhaha?
A 47-year-old woman with a history of cirrhosis is admitted with an acute kidney injury and altered mental status. On the initial workup, there are no signs of infection, and dehydration is determined to be the cause of the kidney injury. There are signs of improvement in the kidney injury with hydration. On hospital day…
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Implementing a critical care TEE program at your institution
Bedside-focused cardiac ultrasound assessment, or cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), has become common in intensive care units throughout the US and the world. Many clinicians argue a POCUS cardiac assessment should be completed in most hypotensive patients and all cases of undifferentiated shock. However, obtaining images adequate for decision making via standard transthoracic echo (TTE) is…
