The LITFL Critical Care Compendium is a comprehensive collection of pages concisely covering the core topics and controversies of critical care.
Influenza and Pregnancy: known high incidence of morbidity and mortality in mother and foetus in H1N1 infection and severe community acquired pneumonia; multidisciplinary team approach: O&G, NICU, anaesthetics, ICU; planned delivery of foetus (although the teams may have conflicting interests)
Spinal Imaging: CT is the best way to image the spine for bony injuries (will miss 6% of discoligamentous injuries). If suspected soft tissue or spinal cord injury -> patient requires an MRI
OVERVIEW microscopy and culture is useful in community acquired diarrhoeal syndromes (not useful otherwise) in-hospital:— blood = ischaemic bowel or surgical cause— diarrhoea = rule out Clostridium difficile infection MICROSCOPY parasites, cysts, ova: giardia, cryptosporidium, blastocystis red and white cells:…
Synovial fluid analysis: - appearance; WCC; RBC; microscopy + culture; protein; LDH; glucose; crystals
Ultrasound in Critical Care: many roles; increasing applicability in emergency medicine and ICU
Bone Marrow Biopsy: Confirm diagnosis. Allows therapy to be targeted. Needs to be done only, if the answer cannot be seen from peripheral blood already.
Standard precautions are work practices that provide a first-line approach to infection prevention in the healthcare environment.
Clinicians must be able to critically appraise clinical trials to determine their internal validity. Trials should adhere to the CONSORT statement (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials)
