How Do I Manage Acute Heart Failure?
The vast majority of patients with acute heart failure (AHF) are hospitalized with signs and symptoms of volume overload. Therefore the most important treatment strategy is to alleviate organ congestion,…
How Is Cardiogenic Shock Diagnosed and Managed in the Intensive Care Unit?
Cardiogenic shock (CS) is defined as an inability of the heart to provide adequate blood flow to maintain the metabolic demands of tissue despite adequate intravascular volume. This definition, and…
Is Persistent Critical Illness an Iatrogenic Disorder?
Medicine is an ancient discipline, but the capacity to avert otherwise certain death is recent. Intravenous fluid therapy was first used in London during the cholera epidemic of 1832; refinements…
Is Selective Decontamination of the Digestive Tract Useful?
Selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD) refers to the administration of prophylactic antibiotics to critically ill patients in the hopes of either preventing or treating airway or digestive tract…
How Do I Diagnose and Manage Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections?
Incidence Annually in the United States alone, more than 5 million central venous catheters (CVCs) are inserted, and patients are exposed to more than 15 million catheter days in the…
Do the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines Work?
What Are Bundles? The development and publication of guidelines seldom lead to changes in clinical behavior, and guidelines are rarely integrated into bedside practice in a timely fashion. Bundles are…
Has Outcome in Sepsis Improved? What Has Worked? What Has Not Worked?
Sepsis, defined as some degree of associated organ dysfunction attributed to a dysregulated host response in association with severe infection, remains a common condition affecting 1% to 11% of hospitalized…
How Can We Monitor the Microcirculation in Sepsis? Does It Improve Outcome?
How Can We Monitor the Microcirculation in Sepsis? Altered Microcirculation in Sepsis Sepsis is a clinical condition associated with high morbidity and mortality worldwide, and its management represents a challenge…
What Vasopressor Agent Should Be Used in the Septic Patient?
This chapter briefly summarizes the hemodynamic derangement associated with sepsis and then sequentially evaluates the various vasopressor agents that have been investigated and are in current use for the treatment…
What MAP Objectives Should Be Targeted in Septic Shock?
Acknowledgments F.B. was supported by a grant from the University Hospital of Angers. Septic shock is defined by a complex association of cardiovascular dysfunction: decreased systemic vascular resistance, hypovolemia, impaired…
