Latest Intensive-care unit Stories

FORT WORTH, Texas, June 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The road home for newborns who must spend the first days, weeks or even months of their lives in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is always difficult. But it's often even more so for their parents and siblings. To make this family journey easier, Baylor All Saints Medical Center's Andrews Women's Hospital has teamed up with the NICU Helping Hands Foundation (NHHF) to host Project NICU, a first-of-its-kind program in Tarrant...

CareSource receives recognition for its NICU Care Transitions Program Dayton, OH (PRWEB) June 25, 2011 CareSource received a Pinnacle Award at the 2011 Ohio Association of Health Plan's (OAHP) Annual Convention in May. CareSource was one of three winners with the top honor in the Health Care Programs category for their Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Care Transitions Program. The Pinnacle Awards recognize the efforts of health plans to improve the quality of health care for Ohioans....

Physicians for critically ill need 'copilots' to remind them of important detailsCaring for patients in a medical intensive care unit in a hospital and flying a 747 are complicated tasks that require tracking thousands of important details, some of which could get overlooked. That's why the pilot has a checklist and a copilot to make sure nothing slips by.A new Northwestern Medicine study shows the attending physician in the intensive care unit could use a copilot, too. The mortality rate...

Patients in the intensive care unit who do not tolerate adequate nutrition from tube feeding should wait a week before receiving intravenous (IV) feeding because, compared with early IV feeding, it enhances recovery from critical illness. Results of a new multicenter study from Belgium will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston."These findings have enormous impact for improving quality and reducing the cost of medical care for critically ill...

Intensive care units (ICUs) that implemented a telemedicine intervention that included offsite electronic monitoring of processes and detection of nonadherence to best practices had lower hospital and ICU mortality, lower rates of preventable complications, and shorter hospital and ICU lengths of stay, according to a study that will appear in the June 1 issue of JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at a meeting of the American Thoracic...

ROCKVILLE, Md., May 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Intensive care units (ICUs) in both large and small hospitals stopped central line-associated bloodstream infections for up to 2 years after using a targeted quality improvement initiative funded in part by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The initiative, known as the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program, or CUSP, was implemented through the Keystone Intensive Care Unit Project in Michigan hospitals. The study, "The...

Study concludes that use of capnography can significantly reduce patient deaths and brain damage from serious airway problems in intensive care units Jerusalem, Israel / Needham, MA (PRWEB) May 03, 2011 Oridion (SIX Swiss Exchange: ORIDN), creator of the Smart Capnographyâ„¢ family of decision support tools for the monitoring of effective ventilation, today heralded a landmark British study concluding that the use of capnography can significantly reduce patient deaths and brain...

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., April 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICUI) today announced it has been awarded a 36-month contract with Premier Purchasing Partners, L.P., the group purchasing unit of Premier Inc., for its hemodynamic monitoring products, which are mostly used in the critical care setting. Effective July 1, 2011, the new agreement allows Premier members, at their discretion, to take advantage of special pricing and terms pre-negotiated by Premier. In addition,...

A new research study of the effect of a commonly used strategy to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospital intensive care units (ICU) shows that the strategy had no significant effect. That's the surprising finding of a multisite study led by Mayo Clinic investigators. The bacteria -- methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) -- are resistant to common antibiotics and harder to treat if patients become infected. The...

Patients who receive intensive care services are very different in the United States than in the United Kingdom, according to a new study that compared admission and mortality statistics from ICUs in each country. The study found that U.K. patients are much sicker upon ICU admission, whereas U.S. patients are more likely to require continuing care after discharge and are often sent to skilled care facilities instead of home."The U.S. has about seven times as many ICU beds available per...