Take this example from a recent op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News about a bill (SB 1010) aimed at prescription drug prices: "If government bureaucrats proceed with such shortsighted measures, severely-ill patients like Corey Wood will never reach the finish line in their battle against cancer and other deadly conditions".
Such a lack of correlation between pain and distress and the systematic attribution of higher scores to the latter compared with the former appear to indicate an unwillingness by the adults to acknowledge that the therapeutic support measures applied to severely ill neonates may also cause pain.
In part, this probably results from the increased levels of activin A and B, measured in these severely ill patients, to stimulate follistatin levels.
We measured the serum/plasma potassium difference of ICU patient within the first 6 hours of their admission and compared it with the difference measured in chronically severely ill (uremic) patients, as well as a group of healthy volunteers.
Transmission of multiresistant CoNS between the intubated patients occurred frequently, stressing the importance of infection control measures in this group of severely ill patients.
Patients with AOD were less severely ill as measured by APACHE II, and adjustment of GCS suggested a trend toward lower severity of illness (p = 0.07).
Patients with abnormal BIVA values had specific features congruent with BIVA measured status and appeared more severely ill than patients with normal BIVA status.
Attention should be paid to measuring lung function in the severely ill patient, however, because the deep inspiration maneuver involved in PEF or FEV1 measurement may precipitate respiratory arrest by worsening bronchospasm [ 31].
Patients who experienced delirium were older (mean ± SD: 56 ± 18 versus 49 ± 17 years; p = 0.002) and more severely ill as measured by Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) scores (median 15, interquartile range (IQR) 10 21 versus 11, IQR 6 16; p < 0.001) compared to their non-delirious counterparts.
Furthermore, ScvO2 might have been measured more frequently in the most severely ill patients, increasing the chance for a high ScvO2 measurement, especially as ScvO2 varies over time.
Patients dying were more severely ill based on all measures used to assess this.
