In the United States, advanced level rescuers often use endotracheal intubation (ETI) to provide oxygenation and ventilation to apneic or hypoventilating patients. Alternate airways are devices that facilitate oxygenation and ventilation without the use of an endotracheal tube (Table 1). Other terms used to describe an alternate airway include rescue airway device, alternative airway, secondary...

All authors are members of the ventricular assist device resource team at the University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. Shauna Andrus is assistant nurse manager in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit, mechanical assist device coordinator, and chair of the team. Janet Dubois is assistant nurse manager in the cardiothoracic telemetry unit. Chandra Jansen was a staff nurse in the ...

BACKGROUND Despite the ability of left ventricular assist device as destination therapy (DT-LVAD) to prolong survival for many patients with advanced heart failure, little is known about the eventual end-of-life care that patients with DT-LVAD receive. METHODS AND RESULTS All patients undergoing DT-LVAD at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, from January 1, 2007, to September 30, 2014, w...

Background. Pain is commonly experienced following surgical procedures. Suboptimal management is multifactorial. Objectives. The primary objective was to assess whether patients used a device (Navimed) to self-report pain over and above a normal baseline of observations. Secondary outcome measures included comparison of pain scores and patient use of and feedback on the device. Methods. In a pr...

This work presents a low-aspect-ratio (LAR) inertial microfluidic design compatible with roll-to-roll (R2R) hot embossing for size-based cell or microparticle separation in a low-cost and disposable format. The device consists of two segments of LAR channels in which inertial lift forces are used to differentiate lateral positions based on size for separation downstream. Separation of 18μm and ...

Over the past several decades, mechanical circulatory support has become an increasingly important treatment for patients with advanced heart failure. Initial proof-of-concept trials focused on reducing the mortality of critically ill patients in cardiogenic shock. Although the ultimate goal of mechanically assisted circulation was always long-term support as an alternative to cardiac transplan...

A prototype of a low-cost balance board for exergaming-based tele-rehabilitation systems is introduced. The objective is to extend at patient’s home the interactive nature of the individualized rehabilitation therapies traditionally carried out at clinic. Preliminary results on posturographic tests showed encouraging performance.

Introduction: Health care delivery is contingent on efficient communication among providers. We hypothesized that using smart-device two-way communication would result in faster provider responses when compared with alphanumeric paging among resident physicians in an academic medical center. Methods: Resident physicians were given an Apple iPad Mini smart device with a Health Insurance Portabil...

BACKGROUND Patient safety is one of the most important elements of quality of healthcare. It means preventing any harm to the patients during medical care process. OBJECTIVE This paper introduces a cost-effective tool in which the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is used to identify medical errors in hospital. METHODS The proposed clinical error management system (CEMS) is c...

Wireless communication and data transmission are playing an increasing role in the critical care environment. Early anecdotal reports of electromagnetic interference (EMI) with intensive care unit (ICU) equipment resulted in many institutions banning these devices. An increasing literature database has more clearly defined the risks of EMI. Restrictions to the use of mobile devices are being li...