Introduction Patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) often have received or require anticoagulation for multiple reasons that include acute thrombotic issues, mechanical valves, venous thromboembolic prophylaxis, atrial fibrillation, ischemic cardiovascular disease, and/or extracorporeal life support. The types of anticoagulation…
Introduction Venous thromboembolism (VTE), which includes both deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is a source of significant morbidity and mortality for the critically ill patient. The development of DVT alone in the intensive care unit (ICU) is…
Blood component therapy is generally supportive for the correction of one or more hematologic deficiencies until the basic disease process can be controlled or corrected. Anemia is pervasive in the intensive care unit (ICU), with over 30%–50% of critically ill…
Anemia remains common in the critical care population, and its etiology is multifactorial, related to hemorrhage, hemodilution, diagnostic phlebotomy, acute inflammation, and functional iron deficiency. These factors result in decreased red blood cell (RBC) production and reduced RBC survival. This…
Introduction Clostridioides difficile is an anaerobic, spore-forming, gram-positive bacillus that may be part of the normal intestinal microbiota in healthy babies. It was officially renamed in 2016 to Clostridioides difficile. The new name reflects the taxonomic differences between this species…
Malaria infections are classified broadly into three clinical categories: (1) asymptomatic parasitemia, which generally does not require treatment for those living in endemic areas; (2) uncomplicated malaria, defined as parasitemia (typically low, though perhaps elevated in those who are semi-immune…
Epidemiology The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.7 billion people are latently infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis worldwide . Approximately 10 million active tuberculosis (TB) cases emerge annually, resulting in 1.2 million deaths and making TB the leading cause of…
Many immunocompromised patients are managed in intensive care units (ICUs) every year, with infection being a leading cause of ICU admission. Common examples of such infections include community-acquired pneumonia, bacteremia, and central nervous system (CNS) infections. The incidence of infections…
Introduction The burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains a global public health issue, with an estimated 1.8 million new infections and almost 800,000 acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)–related deaths in 2018. Around 38 million people are currently living with…
Acute viral infections can produce a variety of clinical manifestations and differing degrees of severity. The vast majority of viral infections range from asymptomatic to mild, occur in the community, and are self-limited. Rarely, acute viral infections cause severe disease,…