Close monitoring of vital signs such as ECG, BP and body weight are vital for many patients suffering cardiovascular disease. MyHeart, an integrated project involving 10 EU Member States, aims to produce better devices and better parameters than currently available, i.e. traditional sensor systems with digital upgrades. The ongoing clinical study has involved six European academic centres and 200…
In March 2008 over 200 cars were involved in a mass traffic accident caused by fog between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Six passengers were killed; hundreds were injured. Similar road traffic accidents, airplane crashes on the most frequented hub in the region and fires in factories and skyscrapers are among the mass casualty events that the Dubai Centre of Ambulance Services face on a daily basis.
The new Isolette 8000 is the latest model in Dräger’s respected Isolette series of infant incubators that introduced innovations such as the patented Dual Air Curtain, known from the Isolette C2000. ‘This thermal management capability, which is also part of the Isolette 8000, reduces radiant heat loss from the infant and contributes to a cocoon-like environment, where the neonate can…
One of the most comprehensive articles on non-invasive ventilation (NIV) has been published this September. Specialists can access this online (e-medicine.medscape.com/article/304235-overview).
How can postoperative delirium and postoperative cognitive dysfunction be avoided? How is it best to address the problem of epilepsy? How can anaesthetists cope better with a patient death under anaesthesia? These difficult questions were among many addressed by specialists at HAI 2009, the annual conference of the German Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (DGAI). Report:…
Dr Vasilios Papaioannou, of the Democritus University of Thrace in Alexandroupoli, Greece, received the €15,000 Bernhard Dräger Award for Advanced Treatment of Acute Respiratory Failure during the opening of The European Society for Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) annual conference in Vienna.
Auf der diesjährigen gemeinsamen Jahrestagung der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Intensivmedizin (SGI), der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (SGN), der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Neuroradiologie (SGNR), der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Nephrologie (SGN) und der Schweizerischen Interessengesellschaft für Intensivpflege (IGIP) stellte der Healthcare-Bereich von…
Maquet is possibly Europe's oldest manufacturer of healthcare equipment. Founded in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1838 the firm initially manufactured patient chairs and other healthcare equipment. Today, Maquet operates three business divisions (see box) each focusing on medical technology for operating theatres (OT) and intensive care units (ICU).
About 5,000 physicians and healthcare workers interested in intensive care and emergency medicine will gather in Brussels for the 29th ISICEM.
As part of a global Safe Surgery Saves Lives programme, a simple, short checklist of guidelines for safe surgical procedures developed by the World Alliance for Patient Safety of World Health Organization (WHO) has produced dramatic results in the first eight hospitals that tested it.
Volumat MC Agilia is the advanced volumetric infusion pump in the Agilia Range, the new family of intuitive infusion devices developed by Fresenius Kabi, based in Brézins, France.
Maquet has launched Cardiohelp, the world's smallest, lightest heart-lung machine, that can not only provide a total therapy solution for heart surgery, cardiology, intensive and emergency care, but also, due to its suitcase size and 10 kg weigh, the device can be carried by just one person onto a helicopter or ambulance for mobile use.
While Western Europe's hospitals only carry out drills for possible terrorist events — Israel's medics face the real thing. During the recent Congress of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine in Berlin, internist Dr Michael Kafka, head of emergency medicine at the Bnai Zion Medical Centre in Haifa, described strategies to cope with mass casualty events.
Maquet has launched Cardiohelp, the world's smallest, lightest heart-lung machine, that can not only provide a total therapy solution for heart surgery, cardiology, intensive and emergency care, but also, due to its suitcase size and 10 kg weigh, the device can be carried by just one person onto a helicopter or ambulance for mo-bile use.
Pressure ulcers are a risk for patients undergoing long surgical procedures. Gel pads, widely used to reduce this risk, are considered to have two major disadvantages: they compromise the patient's thermo regulation by "sucking" warmth from the body and they do not provide sufficient pressure reduction for prominent body parts.
Injections, that's everyday business for the men and women working in healthcare. As long as it is the patients who have to face the needle, it seems. Like in the years before Dr Heinzpeter Moecke, medical director of Asklepios Klinik Nord-Heidberg in Hamburg, Germany, set an example for his staff and had a vaccination.
During the Congress of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) the research work of Hermann Heinze from the Clinic for Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine of the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital was honoured with the first "Bernhard Dräger Award for Advanced Treatment of Acute Respiratory Failure".
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) from UK installed a new educational programm on the internet called eHealth. The courses are free of charge for employees from the National Health Service (NHS) and shall improve the health community's ability to respond effectively to major incidents and emergencies.
Medicine is not earthly anymore. The first defibrillator has reached the International Space Station (ISS). LIFEPAK 1000 developed by Physio-Control of Redmond will be available for NASA crew members in case of a sudden cardiac arrest in space.
Answer: Older men, living in high social deprivation who are treated for pain or infectious diseases are very endangered. That is the simplified result Scottish researchers investigated while trying to point out criterias that might predict the likelihood of emergency admission in adults older than 40 years
Arrythmogenic remodelling of the left atrium is a common complication of atrial fibrillation, leading to severe haemodynamic disturbances.
A newly constructed 220-bed hospital, with 11 operating theatres, an entirely new IT infrastructure and with 1,200 employees, all fully operational and able to provide a comprehensive range of clinical services from day one - impossible?
Since its early beginnings in Europe, during the polio epidemics of the 1950s, intensive care medicine has grown to become a specialty in its own right and the intensive care unit (ICU) occupies an increasingly important position in every hospital. Intensive care doctors are responsible for the management of very sick patients often with multiple and complex disease processes, and ICUs are now…
There is a huge amount of literature being published and even with improved access via the internet, accumulating all the relevant data and applying it correctly to clinical practice is a challenge for even the most fastidious amongst us.
By Professor Jean-Charles Preiser MD PhD, of the Department of General Intensive Care, University Hospital Centre, University of Liege, Belgium
