Improved survival in ARDS: chance, technology or experience?

Improved survival in ARDS: chance, technology or experience?

Predicting Survival in ARDS.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a fulminant clinical disorder of varied etiology, characterized by diffuse lung injury and severe hypoxemia. It is a leading cause of ICU admission and the associated high mortality has sparked a lot of research on etiology, outcome, scoring systems, mortality predictors, biomarkers including inflammatory cytokines and even genomics in ARDS. The pre...

Improved survival in ARDS patients associated with a reduction in pulmonary capillary wedge pressure.

The survival and ICU length of stay of 40 ARDS patients admitted to the ICU were analyzed to determine if a management strategy of lowering the pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (Ppw) was associated with an increased survival or a decreased ICU length of stay. ARDS was defined as three or four quadrant alveolar filling roentgenographically, a PaO2 less than 80 mm Hg with an FIO2 greater than ....

ARDS: predicting mortality and improving survival.

was independently associated with mortality. Interestingly in most of these studies neither the initial oxygenation abnormality (PaO 2 /FiO 2 ratio) nor the ALI (acute lung injury) score predicted mortality. Vigg et al have missed an opportunity to increase the scientific value of their mortality data by not analyzing further their patients dying of ARDS to determine similar predictors of morta...

Geographical variation in cancer patient survival in Finland: chance, confounding, or effect of treatment?

STUDY OBJECTIVE The aim was to determine whether survival of cancer patients in Finland varies with their place of residence, and if so, what proportion of the variation might be due to health services rather than to confounding variables. DESIGN Patients with breast and prostatic cancer diagnosed in Finland between 1970 and 1981 were classified by place of residence (from 21 hospital distric...