Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

Welcome to the 589th Critical Care Reviews Newsletter, bringing you the best critical care research and open access articles from across the medical literature over the past seven days.

The highlights of this week's edition are randomised controlled trials on anticoagulation in patients with hypoxemic COVID-19 pneumonia and the neurological and respiratory effects of lung protective ventilation in acute brain injury patients without lung injury; systematic reviews and meta analyses on the diagnostic yield of CT head in delirium and altered mental status & prophylactic inferior vena cava filters for venous thromboembolism in adults with trauma; and observational studies on intracranial pressure monitoring vs no monitoring in severe penetrating brain injury & osmotic demyelination syndrome in patients hospitalized with hyponatremia.

There are also guidelines on neuroprognostication in adults with Guillain–Barré Syndrome & prehospital haemorrhage control; narrative reviews on personalized fluid therapy in septic shock & temperature control after cardiac arrest; editorials on mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation during in-hospital cardiac arrest & catheter-related thromboses in critically ill patients; and commentaries on antifungal stewardship in critically ill patients &  whether the U-shaped curve is still of relevance to the oxygenation of critically ill patients.

If you only have time to read one review article this week, try this one on prehospital tranexamic acid for trauma victims. Or, you could try some of the fantastic 10 articles from the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2023, released to coincide with the Brussels ISICEM congress. If you missed the trials presented at Brussels, they were included in a supplementary Critical Care Reviews Newsletter at the start of the week.

Latest Trial Result Presentation at CCR23

We're delighted to announce that the results of the Pre-hospital Anti-fibrinolytics for Traumatic Coagulopathy and Haemorrhage trial (PATCH-Trauma) will be presented by Prof Russell Gruen (Canberra, Australia) at CCR23 in June. Thirteen years after the CRASH-2 trial was published, there will soon be some answers to its perceived limitations. Is pre-hospital tranexamic acid beneficial in patients with severe trauma and at risk for acute traumatic coagulopathy? Join us in June to find out!

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