ESICM Talk ESICM

The communication between families of critically ill patients who manifest prolonged disturbances in the consciousness such as patients under sedation, in a coma, or delirium, and the caregivers became very difficult during the stay of the patient in the ICU.
On the other side, the memories of the patients are distressing and confusing and make the ICU experience for this patient very unpleasant.
To overcome these difficulties and to bridge the communication, written diaries by nurses and families for and to the patients are recommended during the ICU stay.
You will get a more detailed description of ICU diaries from the guests in our next podcast – the first one of 2024 from the ESICM N&AHP group.

Professional burnout has been described by WHO as a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Intensive care unit (ICU) professionals are at high risk of experiencing burnout due to the presence of patients with life-threatening illnesses, the observed discrepancies in job demands, responsibility overload, workload, end-of-life issues, perception of futility and other constituting potential stressors. To talk about the prevalence, outcomes, ethical implications and management strategies of ICU professional burnout we have interviewed Dr. Michalsen. Listen to the interview in the following podcast.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains a life-threatening syndrome, resulting in high morbidity and mortality. In ARDS patients and mechanically ventilated critically ill patients, two distinct subphenotypes, presenting hyper- and non-hyperinflammatory characteristics, have been identified.
Studies show that early identification of the inflammatory subphenotypes in patients at risk of ARDS could serve as a predictive or prognostic strategy that will lead to an early intervention and individualization of care.
A study has been carried out to prove the hypothesis that the inflammatory subphenotypes are present before ARDS development in at-risk patients presenting to the emergency department and remain identifiable over time.
To learn more about the methods and findings of this study listen to the next podcast.

Cerebral ultrasound is a developing point-of-care tool for intensivists and emergency physicians, with an important role in diagnosing acute intracranial pathology. The use of transcranial Doppler has expanded over the last years, opening a new window to the assessment of cerebral anatomy not only in neurocritical patients but also in general ICU and emergency room patients.
To discuss the use of cerebral ultrasound for young intensivists we have interviewed Dr. Bertuetti. Listen to the interview in the following podcast. 

Nutrition plays a vital role in the management of critically ill patients, and a tailored approach based on patient assessment, nutritional requirements, and clinical status is essential for optimising outcomes and promoting recovery.
The concept of patient phenotyping and endotyping will help clinicians to better target nutrition interventions for a patient by categorising patients based on observable behaviours and underlying biological mechanisms, respectively.
About these concepts, their clinical use and limitations we have interviewed Dr. Arthur Van Zanten. Listen to his explanations in our podcast offered by NEXT. 

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection. Despite progress in the understanding of sepsis pathophysiology, no specific treatment has proven successful.  The precision therapy, a greater understanding of the heterogeneity of sepsis is needed.
Recent approaches to measuring sepsis heterogeneity used unsupervised computational methods on clinical, biomarker, or gene expression data from observational studies or clinical trial datasets. At present, more than 100 sepsis subtypes are proposed, without awareness of overlap (or clinical implications). It is unknown whether each new subtype strategy is an added value for the patient.
To address this knowledge gap, a study was conducted aiming to determine the concordance between different sub-type labels, outcomes, and biologic pathways of critically ill sepsis patients classified by previously proposed sepsis subtyping methods. Listen to the podcast and learn more about the methodology and findings of this study.