The significant morbidity and disability that family members of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) can experience has been recognized in the past decade. The Society of Critical Care Medicine calls this condition post–intensive care syndrome (PICS). However, as more and more adult ICU patients require long-term acute care hospitalization (LTACH), little is known about PICS in the families of these patients.
Petrinec studied LTACH family decision makers during the hospitalization and up to 2 months after discharge. She found the following:
The author recommends early recognition of PICS in order to provide opportunities for focused family interventions.
See Article, pp 416–422
Infants with single-ventricle physiology undergo surgical palliation soon after birth but continue to have imbalance between pulmonary and systemic blood flow. Endotracheal tube suctioning (ETS) is a routine procedure to maintain tube patency but has been associated with various adverse events such as hypoxemia, bradycardia, and cardiac...