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Derek C Angus

Publications and source records attributed to Derek C Angus.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed2005

The future of critical care.

Critical care has become an important part of the health care system; however, it still is provided in a heterogeneous, and likely suboptimal, fashion. Future challenges will include providing an adequate workforce; ensuring critical care is delivered to the right patients at the right time; converting advances in our understanding of the biology of critical illness into improved care and outcomes; and partnering successfully with patients, families, and society in forging the critical care of the future.

Critical Care↗
PubMed2005

Haloperidol use is associated with lower hospital mortality in mechanically ventilated patients.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether haloperidol use is associated with lower mortality in mechanically ventilated patients. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort analysis. SETTING: A large tertiary care academic medical center. PATIENTS: A total of 989 patients mechanically ventilated for >48 hrs. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We compared differences in hospital mortality between patients who received haloperidol within 2 days of initiation of mechanical ventilation and those who never received haloperidol. Despite similar baseline characteristics, patients treated with haloperidol had significantly lower hospital mortality compared with those who never received haloperidol (20.5% vs. 36.1%; p = .004). The lower associated mortality persisted after adjusting for age, comorbidity, severity of illness, degree of organ dysfunction, admitting diagnosis, and other potential confounders. CONCLUSIONS: Haloperidol was associated with significantly lower hospital mortality. These findings could have enormous implications for critically ill patients. Because of their observational nature and the potential risks associated with haloperidol use, they require confirmation in a randomized, controlled trial before being applied to routine patient care.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Critical care medicine training and certification for emergency physicians.

Demand for critical care services is increasing. Unless the supply of intensivists increases, critically ill patients will not have access to intensivists. Recent critical care society recommendations include increased graduate medical education support and expansion of the J-1 visa waiver program for foreign medical graduates. This article proposes additional recommendations, based on strengthening the relationship between emergency medicine and critical care medicine. Demand for critical care services is increasing. Unless the supply of intensivists increases, critically ill patients will not have access to intensivists. Recent critical care society recommendations include increased graduate medical education support and expansion of the J-1 visa waiver program for foreign medical graduates. This article proposes additional recommendations, based on strengthening the relationship between emergency medicine (EM) and critical care medicine (CCM). Critical care is a continuum that includes prehospital, emergency department (ED), and intensive care unit (ICU) care teams. Both EM and CCM require expertise in treating life-threatening acute illness, with many critically ill patients often presenting first to the ED. Increased patient volumes and acuity have resulted in longer ED lengths of stay and more critical care delivery in the ED. However, the majority of CCM fellowships do not accept EM residents, and those who successfully complete a fellowship do not have access to a U.S. certification exam in CCM. Despite these barriers, interest in CCM training among EM physicians is increasing. Dual EM/CCM-trained physicians not only will help alleviate the intensivist shortage but also will strengthen critical care delivery in the ED and facilitate coordination at the ED-ICU interface. We therefore propose that all accreditation bodies work cooperatively to create a route to CCM certification for emergency physicians who complete a critical care fellowship.

Certification↗
PubMed2005

Outcome measures for clinical research in sepsis: a report of the 2nd Cambridge Colloquium of the International Sepsis Forum.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sepsis is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for patients admitted to an intensive care unit. The evaluation of new therapies has been hampered by the underdevelopment of outcome measures used to detect biological activity and patient-centered benefit in a complex and highly heterogeneous patient population. We sought to evaluate existing approaches and to draw on insights from other disciplines to propose a comprehensive approach to outcome evaluation in sepsis clinical trials. METHODS: An expert colloquium organized by the International Sepsis Forum brought together sepsis researchers, clinical epidemiologists, and experts in the development and implementation of outcome measures in rheumatology, neurology, and oncology. RESULTS: The translation of an evolving understanding of the biology of sepsis into effective new therapies for critically ill patients requires a reevaluation of the end points used to determine response to intervention. These represent a continuum that measures biological activity against the target at one end and sustained improvement in survival or quality of life at the other. Early phase research should determine whether an intervention works in vivo, using measures that are responsive and informative to provide proof of principle, to aid in selecting optimal patient populations for study, and to gain insights into optimal dose and duration of therapy. After in vivo biology has been demonstrated and the possibility of efficacy inferred by plausible improvements in surrogate physiologic measures, definitive studies should seek robust evidence of benefit using end points that measure important, patient-centered benefit, including intermediate and longer term survival and health-related quality of life. Nonmortal measures of benefit assume particular importance for populations, such as children, whose mortality risk is low, or who have significant rates of comorbidities that independently limit survival. Composite measures that integrate morbidity and mortality effects may provide the most meaningful information about therapeutic efficacy. CONCLUSIONS: The development of explicit, hypothesis-driven, and iterative approaches to outcome measure development, patterned on approaches used in the fields of rheumatology and oncology, may improve the conduct of clinical studies in the critically ill.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗
PubMed2005

Potential mechanisms and markers of critical illness-associated cognitive dysfunction.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review the current understanding of the potential mechanisms of critical illness-associated cognitive dysfunction and to provide insight into markers that could be used to evaluate the influence of specific mechanisms in individual patients. RECENT FINDINGS: Cognitive dysfunction is common in critically ill patients, not only during the acute illness but also long after its resolution. Several pathophysiologic mechanisms are thought to underlie critical illness-associated cognitive dysfunction, including neurotransmitter abnormalities and occult diffuse brain injury. Markers that could be used to evaluate the influence of specific mechanisms in individual patients include serum anticholinergic activity, certain brain proteins, and tissue sodium concentration determination by way of high-resolution three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging. SUMMARY: Although recent advances in this area are exciting, they are still too immature to influence patient care. Additional research is needed to provide a better understanding of the relative contribution of specific mechanisms to the development of critical illness-associated cognitive dysfunction and to determine whether these mechanisms might be amenable to treatment or prevention.

Biomarkers↗
PubMed2005

What's in a day?

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed2004

Dynamic microsimulation to model multiple outcomes in cohorts of critically ill patients.

BACKGROUND: Existing intensive care unit (ICU) prediction tools forecast single outcomes, (e.g., risk of death) and do not provide information on timing. OBJECTIVE: To build a model that predicts the temporal patterns of multiple outcomes, such as survival, organ dysfunction, and ICU length of stay, from the profile of organ dysfunction observed on admission. DESIGN: Dynamic microsimulation of a cohort of ICU patients. SETTING: 49Forty-nine ICUs in 11 countries. PATIENTS: One thousand four hundred and forty-nine patients admitted to the ICU in May 1995. INTERVENTIONS: None. MODEL CONSTRUCTION: We developed the model on all patients (n=989) from 37 randomly-selected ICUs using daily Sequential Organ Function Assessment (SOFA) scores. We validated the model on all patients (n=460) from the remaining 12 ICUs, comparing predicted-to-actual ICU mortality, SOFA scores, and ICU length of stay (LOS). MAIN RESULTS: In the validation cohort, the predicted and actual mortality were 20.1% (95%CI: 16.2%-24.0%) and 19.9% at 30 days. The predicted and actual mean ICU LOS were 7.7 (7.0-8.3) and 8.1 (7.4-8.8) days, leading to a 5.5% underestimation of total ICU bed-days. The predicted and actual cumulative SOFA scores per patient were 45.2 (39.8-50.6) and 48.2 (41.6-54.8). Predicted and actual mean daily SOFA scores were close (5.1 vs 5.5, P=0.32). Several organ-organ interactions were significant. Cardiovascular dysfunction was most, and neurological dysfunction was least, linked to scores in other organ systems. CONCLUSIONS: Dynamic microsimulation can predict the time course of multiple short-term outcomes in cohorts of critical illness from the profile of organ dysfunction observed on admission. Such a technique may prove practical as a prediction tool that evaluates ICU performance on additional dimensions besides the risk of death.

Cohort Studies↗
PubMed2004

Severe sepsis epidemiology: sampling, selection, and society.

Three new articles in Critical Care add to an expanding body of information on the epidemiology of severe sepsis. Although there have been a range of approaches to estimate the incidence of severe sepsis, most studies report severe sepsis in about 10 +/- 4% of ICU patients with a population incidence of 1 +/- 0.5 cases per 1000. Importantly, the availability of ICU services may well determine the number of treated cases of severe sepsis, and it seems clear that these studies are reporting the treated incidence, not the incidence, of severe sepsis. In the future, we must focus on whether all severe sepsis should be treated, and, consequently, what level of ICU services is optimal.

Consensus↗
PubMed2004

Improving care of the critically ill: institutional and health-care system approaches.

Institutional and health-care system approaches complement bedside strategies to improve care of the critically ill. Focusing on the USA and the UK, we discuss seven approaches: education (especially of non-clinical managers, policy-makers, and the public), organisational guidelines, performance reporting, financial and sociobehavioural incentives to health-care professionals and institutions, regulation, legal requirements, and health-care system reorganisation. No single action is likely to have sustained effect and we recommend a combination of approaches. Several recent initiatives that hold promise tie performance reporting to financial incentives. Though performance reporting has been hampered by concerns over cost and accuracy, it remains an essential component and we recommend continued effort in this area. We also recommend more public education and use of organisational guidelines, such as admission criteria and staffing levels in intensive care units. Even if these endeavours are successful, with rising demand for services and continuing pressure to control costs, optimum care of the critically ill will not be realised without a fundamental reorganisation of services. In both the USA and UK, we recommend exploration of regionalised care, akin to US state trauma systems, and greater use of physician-extenders, such as nurse practitioners, to provide enhanced access to specialist care for critical illness.

Critical Care↗
PubMed2004

Understanding the lingering consequences of what we treat and what we do.

Granja and colleagues have helped us by showing that long-term follow-up is feasible and by trying to tease out whether select intensive care unit patient populations are at particular risk of adverse outcomes. This work gives us clues for future investigations which will hopefully interrogate further the potential mechanisms of action that underlie poor long-term outcomes. In the meantime, we can hope that this quality of follow-up will move from the research arena to become a part of routine clinical care.

Critical Illness↗
PubMed2004

Survival after liver transplantation in the United States: a disease-specific analysis of the UNOS database.

Our goal was to describe disease-specific survival and the clinical variables that predict survival in a large national cohort of adult liver transplant recipients. Data on 17,044 adult patients who received an initial orthotopic liver transplant between 1990 and 1996 with follow-up through 1999 was obtained from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Disease-specific Kaplan-Meier survival plots and Cox Proportional Hazards models were estimated, and differences in the clinical characteristics of patients at the time of transplantation by disease were examined. Overall posttransplant survival currently exceeds 85% in the first year and is approaching 75% at 5 years. Unadjusted Kaplan-Meier survival is improved for recipients who are younger, female, and in better clinical condition. Survival is a function of disease and level of illness: cancer, fulminant liver failure, alcoholic liver disease, and the hepatitidies have the poorest prognosis, while primary billiary cirrohsis and sclerosing cholangitis have the best. Recipients who were outpatients before transplantation have longer survival than those transplanted from the hospital or intensive care unit. Although the model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score was designed to predict pretransplant survival, patients with higher MELD scores have poorer posttransplant survival, but the MELD score is less predictive than the specific disease. Differences in disease-specific survival are partially explained by differences in disease severity at the time of transplantation. In conclusion, Disease-specific survival models indicate that there remains tremendous variability in survival as a function of underlying liver disease. However, a significant portion of the difference in survival between diseases arises from differences in clinical characteristics at the time of transplantation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Value and role of intensive care unit outcome prediction models in end-of-life decision making.

In the United States, intensive care unit (ICU) admission at the end of life is commonplace. What is the value and role of ICU mortality prediction models for informing the utility of ICU care?In this article, we review the history, statistical underpinnings,and current deployment of these models in clinical care. We conclude that the use of outcome prediction models to ration care that is unlikely to provide an expected benefit is hampered by imperfect performance, the lack of real-time availability, failure to consider functional outcomes beyond survival, and physician resistance to the use of probabilistic information when death is guaranteed by the decision it informs. Among these barriers, the most important technical deficiency is the lack of automated information systems to provide outcome predictions to decision makers, and the most important research and policy agenda is to understand and address our national ambivalence toward rationing care based on any criterion.

Advance Care Planning↗
PubMed2004

Health status versus utilities of patients with end-stage liver disease.

BACKGROUND: Health-related quality of life (HRQL) in patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) can be evaluated using either health-status questionnaires or utility assessment techniques. The two approaches have never been compared in terms of the values they assign to health prior to liver transplantation. STUDY DESIGN: We assessed health status of patients with ESLD using validated disease-specific instruments covering multiple domains (measures of disease, psychological status, personal function, social/role function, and general health perception). We also elicited utilities using formal approaches (standard gamble [SG] and time tradeoff [TTO]) and a simpler alternative (visual analog scale [VAS]). PATIENTS: Outpatients and inpatients at a single center prior to liver transplantation (n = 78). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Health status was generally poor (median physical symptoms score on a 0-1 [worst to best] scale, 0.33; psychological symptoms, 0; happiness, 0.50; personal function, 0; social/role function, 0.40; and general health perception, 0.40). The median VAS score was 0.50. The median TTO was 0.79, indicating that half of the patients in our sample chose healthier life in return for a 21% shorter life expectancy. The median SG score was 0.50, indicating that half of the patients were willing to take up to a 50% risk of death in exchange for perfect health. CONCLUSIONS: Both health status measures and utility assessments indicate that HRQL is compromised in patients awaiting liver transplantation. Despite the overall consistency between the two approaches, however, health status measures do not serve as reasonable proxies for utilities. For formal economic evaluations such as cost effectiveness analyses, only direct measures of utility can be used to quantify health states.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Genetic epidemiology of sepsis and septic shock.

Sepsis affects more than 750,000 people each year in the United States alone, with a mortality rate of over 35% making it one of the leading causes of death in developed countries. Recent genetic analysis has provided us with several candidate genes, which have become the focus of genetic research in sepsis. The analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms among various genes, such as those coding for pro- and antiinflammatory mediators, in the septic response has the potential to develop into prediction tools that will permit the clinician to more precisely determine the type of therapy that a particular patient should receive. However, unraveling the genetic variation in sepsis is complicated, and close attention must be paid to study design issues, including the selection of an appropriate study population and sample size and understanding gene-environment interactions. We must anticipate that future implementation of genetic information will lend itself to additional ethical dilemmas when we are faced with allocation of resources.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Guidelines for critical care medicine training and continuing medical education.

OBJECTIVE: Critical care medicine trainees and faculty must acquire and maintain the skills necessary to provide state-of-the art clinical care to critically ill patients, to improve patient outcomes, optimize intensive care unit utilization, and continue to advance the theory and practice of critical care medicine. This should be accomplished in an environment dedicated to compassionate and ethical care. PARTICIPANTS: A multidisciplinary panel of professionals with expertise in critical care education and the practice of critical care medicine under the direction of the American College of Critical Care Medicine. SCOPE: Physician education in critical care medicine in the United States should encompass all disciplines that provide care in the intensive care unit and all levels of training: from medical students through all levels of postgraduate training and continuing medical education for all providers of clinical critical care. The scope of this guideline includes physician education in the United States from residency through ongoing practice after subspecialization. DATA SOURCES AND SYNTHESIS: Relevant literature was accessed via a systematic Medline search as well as by requesting references from all panel members. Subsequently, the bibliographies of obtained literature were reviewed for additional references. In addition, a search of organization-based published material was conducted via the Internet. This included but was not limited to material published by the American College of Critical Care Medicine, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, and other primary and specialty organizations. Collaboratively and iteratively, the task force met, by conference call and in person, to construct the tenets and ultimately the substance of this guideline. CONCLUSIONS: Guidelines for the continuum of education in critical care medicine from residency through specialty training and ongoing throughout practice will facilitate standardization of physician education in critical care medicine.

Clinical Competence↗