Critical Care Reviews Newsletter
December 2nd 2012
Welcome
Hello
Welcome to the 52nd Critical Care Reviews Newsletter, bringing you the best critical care research published in the past week, plus a wide range of free full text review articles and guidelines from over 300 clinical and scientific journals. The Newsletter has reached its first anniversary and in this time has monitored over 10,000 journal issues, provided links to over 1,000 free review articles and highlighted all major critical care research, including landmark papers such as Chest and 6S, usually well ahead of print.
This week's research studies include 2 papers from JAMA on the efficacy of aldosterone antagonists in heart failure, a retrospective study from Intensive Care Medicine, further supporting restrictive red cell transfusion, and a meta analysis from the International Journal of Cardiology confirming the utility of beta blockade in acute coronary syndromes.
This week's guideline is on the design of randomized cluster trials
Amongst the clinical review articles are papers on depth of anaesthesia monitoring, ultrasound for intravascular volume assessment, pulmonary hypertension, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, abdominal vein thrombosis, bioartificial liver support, cardiac surgery-associated AKI, malignant hyperthermia, tropical infections, and, as a nice foil to the above transfusion study, a review on transfusion in the anaemic critically ill patient.
The topic for This Week's Papers is alcohol, starting with a paper on alcoholic ketoacidosis in tomorrow's Paper of the Day.
Research
Intensive Care Medicine: Red Cell Transfusion
To investigate the efficacy of red blood cell transfusion at reversing the deleterious effects of moderate anemia (7-9 g/dL) in critically ill, non-bleeding patients, Leal-Noval undertook a retrospective, pair-matched (ratio 1:1) cohort study in 428 patients. Compared with transfused anaemic patients (TAPS), non-transfused anaemic patients (NTAPs) showed significantly lower rates of hospital mortality (21 vs.13 %, respectively; p < 0.05) and ICU re-admission (7.4 vs. 1.9 %, respectively; p < 0.05). Additionally, NTAPs had significantly lower rates of nosocomial infection (12.9 vs. 6.7 %, respectively; p < 0.05) and acute kidney injury (24.8 vs. 16.7 %, respectively; p < 0.05). Similar results were obtained in subgroup analysis where only more anemic patients (68 matched pairs) or patients with cardiovascular comorbidities (63 matched pairs) were considered.
Journal of the American Medical Association: Aldosterone Antagonists in Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction
Hernandez et al used clinical registry data to examine the effectiveness of newly initiated aldosterone antagonist therapy among 5887 elderly patients hospitalized with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. Mortality among treated and untreated patients was 49.9% vs 51.2% (P = .62); 63.8% vs 63.9% (P = .65) for cardiovascular readmission; and 38.7% vs 44.9% (P < .001) for heart failure readmission at 3 years; and 2.9% vs 1.2% (P < .001) for hyperkalemia readmission within 30 days and 8.9% vs 6.3% (P = .002) within 1 year. After inverse weighting for the probability of treatment, there were no significant differences in mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 1.04; 95% CI, 0.96-1.14; P = .32) and cardiovascular readmission (HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.91-1.09; P = .94). Heart failure readmission was lower among treated patients at 3 years (HR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.77-0.98; P = .02). Readmission associated with hyperkalemia was higher with aldosterone antagonist therapy at 30 days (HR, 2.54; 95% CI, 1.51-4.29; P < .001) and 1 year (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.23-1.84; P < .001).
Journal of the American Medical Association: Aldosterone Antagonists in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction
To test the hypothesis that renin-angiotensin system (RAS) antagonists are associated with reduced all-cause mortality in patients with heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF), Lund et al performed a prospective study in 41 791 patients in the Swedish Heart Failure Registry. Of these, 16 216 patients with HFPEF (ejection fraction ≥40%; mean [SD] age, 75 [11] years; 46% women) were either treated (n = 12 543) or not treated (n = 3673) with RAS antagonists. In the matched HFPEF cohort, 1-year survival was 77% (95% CI, 75%-78%) for treated patients vs 72% (95% CI, 70%-73%) for untreated patients, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.85-0.98; P = .008). In the overall HFPEF cohort, crude 1-year survival was 86% (95% CI, 86%-87%) for treated patients vs 69% (95% CI, 68%-71%) for untreated patients, with a propensity score–adjusted HR of 0.90 (95% CI, 0.85-0.96; P = .001). In the HFPEF dose analysis, the HR was 0.85 (95% CI, 0.78-0.83) for 50% or greater of target dose vs no treatment (P < .001) and 0.94 (95% CI, 0.87-1.02) for less than 50% of target dose vs no treatment (P = .14). In 20,111 age and propensity score–matched patients, heart failure with reduced ejection fraction patients, the HR was 0.80 (95% CI, 0.74-0.86; P < .001).
International Journal of Cardiology: Beta Blockade in Myocardial Infarction
Chatterjee and colleagues performed a meta analysis of studies comparing intravenous beta-blockers administered within 12hours of presentation of acute coronary syndromes with standard medical therapy and/or placebo. Sixteen studies enrolling 73,396 participants were included. In- hospital mortality was reduced 8% with intravenous beta-blockers, RR=0.92 (95% CI, 0.86–1.00; p=0.04) when compared with controls. Moreover, intravenous beta-blockade reduced the risk of ventricular tachyarrhythmias (RR=0.61; 95 % CI 0.47–0.79; p=0.0003) and myocardial reinfarction (RR=0.73, 95 % CI 0.59–0.91; p=0.004) without increase in the risk of cardiogenic shock, (RR=1.02; 95% CI 0.77–1.35; p=0.91) or stroke (RR=0.58; 95 % CI 0.17–1.98; p=0.38).
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine: Nutrition
Casaer et al performed a secondary analyses of data from the randomized controlled EPaNIC trial (n=4640), which, in the setting of insufficient enteral nutrition, evaluated the addition of early parenteral nutrition. In none of the subgroups defined by type or severity of illness was a beneficial effect of Early-PN observed. The lowest dose of macronutrients was associated with the fastest recovery and any higher dose, administered parenterally or enterally, was associated with progressively more delayed recovery. The amount of proteins/amino-acids rather than of glucose appeared to explain delayed recovery with early feeding
Critical Care: sTREM
Wu et al performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 studies to evaluate the accuracy of plasma sTREM-1 for sepsis diagnosis in 1,795 patients with systemic inflammation. The pooled sensitivity and specificity was 79% (95% CI, 65 - 89) and 80% (95% CI, 69 - 88), respectively. The positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio and diagnostic odds ratio were 4.0 (95% CI, 2.4 – 6.9), 0.26 (95% CI, 0.14 - 0.48), and 16 (95% CI, 5 - 46), respectively. The area under the curve of the summary receiver operator characteristic was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.84 - 0.89). Meta-regression analysis suggested that patient sample size and assay method were the main sources of heterogeneity. Publication bias was suggested by an asymmetrical funnel plot (p = 0.02).
Guideline
PLoS Medicine: Cluster Randomized Trials
Review - Clinical
Neurological
Indian Journal of Anaesthesia: Depth of Anaesthesia Monitors
Clinical and Translational Medicine: Stem Cells for Neuroregeneration
Circulatory
Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine: Caval Ultrasound for Intravascular Volume Monitoring
Clinical Cardiology: BNP in Acute Coronary Syndromes
Clinical Cardiology: Aspirin Resistance
Respiratory
Respiratory Research: Statins for Asthma
- Yuan. Statins as potential therapeutic drug for asthma?Yuan. Statins as potential therapeutic drug for asthma? Respiratory Research 2012;13:108
European Respiratory Review: Pulmonary Hypertension
- Guazzi. Pulmonary hypertension in left heart disease. Eur Respir Rev 2012;21(126):338–346
- Vachiéry. Challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Eur Respir Rev 2012;21(126):313-320
- Sitbon. Pathways in pulmonary arterial hypertension: the future is here. Eur Respir Rev 2012;21(126):321-327
European Respiratory Review: COPD
European Respiratory Review: Lung Transplantation
Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
- Spagnolo. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: diagnostic pitfalls and therapeutic challenges. Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine 2012, 7:42
- Antoniu. Nintedanib (BIBF 1120) for IPF: a tomorrow therapy? Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine 2012;7:41
Gastrointestinal
Journal of Transplantation: Small Bowel Transplantation
The Netherlands Journal of Medicine: Abdominal Vein Thrombosis
Gut Pathogens: Gut Pharmacomicrobiomics
Hepatobiliary
Hepatobiliary & Pancreatic Diseases International: Bioartificial Liver Support
Renal
Journal of Anesthesia: Cardiac Surgery-associated Acute Kidney Injury
Metabolic
Korean Journal of Anesthesiology: Malignant Hyperthermia
Haematological
Journal of Blood Transfusion: Anaemia
Sepsis
Swiss Medical Weekly: Tropical Infections
Infection and Drug Resistance: Tuberculosis
Review - Basic Science
Cardiovascular Research: Proteomics
Open Access Medical Statistics : Linear Regression
I hope you find these brief summaries and links useful.
Until next week
Rob