Objective Reviewing indications and characteristics of obstetric patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of a tertiary care center, comparing those patients by time period and place of delivery, and to verify clinical utility of acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) II score in ICU-admitted women. Methods Retrospective analyses were carried out for parturients adm...

Adipokines have many homeostatic roles, including modulation of glucose metabolism, but their role in the pathophysiology of hyperglycemia associated with acute and critical illnesses in general, and acute pancreatitis (AP) in particular, is largely unknown. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between a panel of adipokines and hyperglycemia in the early course of AP, as well as the...

Introduction: Improving the health level of patients is one of the most important purposes in intensive care units. In order to promote these units we need to measure their quality. To do so, some standards are needed in this area. The aim of this article was to study the mortality rate of the patients admitted to intensive care units with different APACHE scores. <strong...

In the study by Haniffa et al., the authors have brilliantly proposed “TropICS” as the first multinational prognostic model for critically ill patients in resource-limited settings. The study used data from four South East Asian nations, involving a large number of unselected ICU patients for development and validation of three prognostic models. Of the three proposed models, TropICS performed ...

OBJECTIVE To describe the clinical characteristics, laboratory data, and clinical outcomes of patients with and without sepsis admitted to the ICU of a private hospital in the city of Salvador, Brazil, and to identify clinical variables related to a worse prognosis in those with sepsis. METHODS This was a longitudinal study including all patients admitted to the general ICU of the Hospital Po...

BACKGROUND Noise levels in hospitals, especially in intensive care units (ICUs) are known to be high, potentially affecting not only the patients' well-being but also their clinical outcomes. In an observational study, we made a long-term measurement of noise levels in an ICU, and investigated the influence of various factors on the noise level, including the acute physiology and chronic health...

BACKGROUND Organophosphates and carbamates are insecticides that are associated with high human mortality. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prognostic factors affecting survival in patients with cholinesterase inhibitor (CI) poisoning. MATERIAL AND METHODS This study included 92 patients with CI poisoning in the period from January 2005 to August 2013. We divided these patients...

BACKGROUND The indications for surgical treatment of patients with head and neck cancer can be limited by the risk of perioperative complications. Prediction of outcome is important in disease stratification and the subsequent decision-making process. OBJECTIVE To assess the value of the APACHE II (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II) score, POSSUM (Physiological and Operative S...

BACKGROUND The predictive accuracy of scores on the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) for in-hospital mortality among critically ill cancer patients varies. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the predictive accuracy of APACHE II scores for severity of illness in critically ill cancer patients and to find clinical indicators to improve the accuracy. METHODS Actual hospital mor...