scholarly journals Gastrointestinal perforation in a critically ill patient with COVID-19 pneumonia

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 2050313X2094057
Author(s):  
Aaron Kangas-Dick ◽  
Christopher Prien ◽  
Kristin Rojas ◽  
Qinghua Pu ◽  
Mohammad Hamshow ◽  
...  

Gastrointestinal complications in critically ill patients during the COVID-19 pandemic pose a diagnostic and treatment dilemma. We present a case of a 74-year-old male who was brought to our emergency department with worsening shortness of breath, fever, and dry cough and was found to have COVID-19 pneumonia. Early in his hospital course, he was admitted to the intensive care unit, and was found to have significant abdominal distension with large amounts of simple fluid on bedside ultrasound. Bedside paracentesis returned succus and enteric feeds, and a methylene blue test confirmed a likely gastrointestinal perforation. The patients’ family refused surgical intervention and the patient underwent bedside drainage. This case represents several critical dilemmas clinicians faced during the recent surge of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-228
Author(s):  
María C. Arango-Granados ◽  
Luis A. Bustamante Cristancho ◽  
Virginia Zarama Córdoba

2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-89
Author(s):  
Michael A. Jantz ◽  
Steven A. Sahn

Pleural disease itself is an unusual cause for admission to the intensive care unit (ICU). Pleural complications of diseases and procedures in the ICU are common, however, and the impact on respiratory physiology is additive to that of the underlying cardiopulmonary disease. Pleural effusion and pneumothorax may be overlooked in the critically ill patient due to alterations in radiologic appearance in the supine patient. The development of a pneumothorax in a patient in the ICU represents a potentially life-threatening situation. This article reviews the etiologies, pathophysiology, and management of pleural effusion, pneumothorax, tension pneumothorax, and bronchopleural fistula in the critically ill patient. In addition, we review the potential complications of thoracentesis and chest tube thoracostomy, including re-expansion pulmonary edema.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiangrong Zhai ◽  
Zi Lin ◽  
Hongxia Ge ◽  
Yang Liang ◽  
Nan Li ◽  
...  

AbstractThe number of critically ill patients has increased globally along with the rise in emergency visits. Mortality prediction for critical patients is vital for emergency care, which affects the distribution of emergency resources. Traditional scoring systems are designed for all emergency patients using a classic mathematical method, but risk factors in critically ill patients have complex interactions, so traditional scoring cannot as readily apply to them. As an accurate model for predicting the mortality of emergency department critically ill patients is lacking, this study’s objective was to develop a scoring system using machine learning optimized for the unique case of critical patients in emergency departments. We conducted a retrospective cohort study in a tertiary medical center in Beijing, China. Patients over 16 years old were included if they were alive when they entered the emergency department intensive care unit system from February 2015 and December 2015. Mortality up to 7 days after admission into the emergency department was considered as the primary outcome, and 1624 cases were included to derive the models. Prospective factors included previous diseases, physiologic parameters, and laboratory results. Several machine learning tools were built for 7-day mortality using these factors, for which their predictive accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) was evaluated by area under the curve (AUC). The AUCs were 0.794, 0.840, 0.849 and 0.822 respectively, for the SVM, GBDT, XGBoost and logistic regression model. In comparison with the SAPS 3 model (AUC = 0.826), the discriminatory capability of the newer machine learning methods, XGBoost in particular, is demonstrated to be more reliable for predicting outcomes for emergency department intensive care unit patients.


Curationis ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Dannenfeldt

The technical and physical care of the critically ill patient has been perfected, but the psychological aspects of intensive nursing care have to a greater or lesser extent been neglected. The objective of this article is to highlight the causes of psychological problems in an intensive care unit, how to recognise these problems and above all how to prevent or correct them.


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