It’s a difficult time for all of PICU with coronavirus causing international devastation. Stay safe everyone, work hard, do your best. At the 2019 PICS/PCICS conference in London, Simon Nadel gave a talk on the use of ECMO in very severe sepsis. There is little which is more frightening in Read more…
Lots of us look after major trauma patients: but I can almost guarantee that no one has looked after trauma to the scale of Shehan Hettiaratchy. He gave a fascinating talk at the 2019 PICS/PCICS conference based around his experiences of major combat trauma in Afghanistan. The survival rate for Read more…
Ruchi Sinha is a consultant in PICU in St Mary’s, London, where she works in conjunction with the infectious diseases team to plan the UK’s response to High Consequence Infectious Diseases. These are the scary ones: Ebola, Hantavirus, Lassa Fever, the novel coronaviruses, etc. These are the diseases which have Read more…
Peter Rimensberger is an intensivist in Geneva, well known for his work on ventilation. PicPod interviewed him during the PICS/PCICS conference in London in November. NAVA (Neurally Adjusted Ventilatory Assist) mode uses an oesophageal probe to sense diaphragmatic electrical impulse, and adds ventilatory power to assist depending on how much Read more…
Paul Kemp is a molecular biologist from Imperial College, London, who researches the genomics of muscle wasting in critical illness. Some surprising numbers here: how fast is our normal muscle turnover? What is the rate of critical illness myopathy, and does it matter? Can we predict who gets myopathy, and Read more…
Welcome to the first of our podcasts using interviews recorded during the 2019 PICS/PCICS conference in London in November. Anthony Bennett was one of the opening speakers. Almost ten years ago, aged 16, he became seriously unwell and underwent three weeks of ECMO, and had twelve cardiac arrests. Since then Read more…
The Tracheostomy: is it a short cut to discharge, or of significant benefit to the patients? What are the risks, and what are the benefits? When should a tracheostomy be done? Are there benefits in the short and long term to going early or late? What is the evidence, and Read more…
Sepsis is everywhere. We hear lots of news stories about sepsis patients, and the solution seems easy. Follow the guidelines, identify sepsis, and treat it early. As always it’s not so simple. How is sepsis defined? How is it identified? And which patients need urgent treating? Are the current sepsis Read more…
PicPod 27 is about death. We try so hard to stop our patients from dying, and yet we cannot stop all of them. How have death rates changed over the past 30 years? Have the patients dying changed? Has the mode of death changed? Is this because of better treatment, Read more…
We are better at making children survive. But are we better at making them survive well? What are the trends in survival and outcome quality over time? There is obvious benefit to children needing PIC, but does PIC do harm to patients? How can we minimise this? What kind of Read more…