Critically ill patients with multi-organ failure are especially susceptible to problems with skin integrity, including skin failure. An 18-month, prospective, descriptive study was conducted to identify and describe characteristics of intensive care unit (ICU) patients with skin failure and examine the relationships among patient demographics, nutritional status, laboratory parameters, the pres...

Introduction Acute renal failure is a frequent complication in critically ill patients and carries a mortality of 50 to 70%.[1] The traditionally held belief has been that kidney failure does not kill on its own as long as complications such as hyperkalaemia, acidosis and volume overload are prevented. There is evidence to suggest that this may not always be the case. We know today that acute r...

The biomechanics of hip fractures has been studied by many authors in the past; however, predictions of the fracture location and character remain difficult and speculative. The aims of the present study are threefold. First, to investigate whether proximal femur trochanteric and cervical geometrical metrics correlate with outcomes of dynamic drop tower testing carried out on human donor femurs...

OBJECTIVE To compare postoperative complications in patients undergoing major surgery who received non-filtered or filtered red blood cell transfusions. DESIGN Prospective, randomised, double blinded trial. SETTING 19 hospitals throughout the Netherlands (three university; 10 clinical; six general). PARTICIPANTS 1051 evaluable patients: 79 patients with ruptured aneurysm, 412 patients und...

Molecular pathological pathways leading to multi-organ failure in critical illness are progressively being unravelled. However, attempts to modulate these pathways have not yet improved the clinical outcome. Therefore, new targetable mechanisms should be investigated. We hypothesize that increased dicarbonyl stress is such a mechanism. Dicarbonyl stress is the accumulation of dicarbonyl metabol...

An 85-year-old man, who had previously undergone coronary bypass surgery, was subjected to a computed tomography (CT) scan because of an echocardiographic suspect of massive pulmonary embolism. A huge aortic arch aneurysm compressed the pulmonary arteries (Fig. 1). Sudden cardio-respiratory failure required mechanical ventilation. At this stage, surgeons considered him inoperable for high risk....

INTRODUCTION Organ dysfunction or failure after the first days of ICU treatment and subsequent mortality with respect to the type of intensive care unit (ICU) admission is poorly elucidated. Therefore we analyzed the association of ICU mortality and admission for medical (M), scheduled surgery (ScS) or unscheduled surgery (US) patients mirrored by the occurrence of organ dysfunction/failure (OD...

Psittacosis is a systemic disease that causes fever, headache and pneumonia. Although potentially serious, it is rarely fatal unless respiratory or renal failure occurs. In this case report we describe a case of psittacosis with an unusual clinical picture for this disease and where, despite multi-organ failure, the patient survived.

Wasp stings can present in various ways, ranging from mild self-limiting illness to severe multi organ failure with a potentially fatal outcome. We report a case of multiple wasp stings leading to acute renal failure needing prolonged dialysis support and posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome.