Med Klin Intensivmed Notfmed
August 2025
The number of patients with active cancer continues to rise and leads to increased emergency department visits. The symptoms are frequently associated with the underlying malignancy and include dyspnea, fever, pain, as well as gastrointestinal and neurological complaints. Hospitalization and intensive care unit admission rates are high and impose a significant burden on resource utilization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFApproximately 20% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients have cancer, and their prognosis has markedly improved in recent years. In addition to improved treatment in the ICU, this is a result of advancements in cancer therapies, including the use of targeted therapies (TTs), such as antibodies and small-molecule kinase inhibitors. Despite the increasing use of TT, there are currently no comprehensive studies examining critically ill cancer patients receiving TT in the ICU.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Anaesthesiol Scand
September 2024
Acta Anaesthesiol Scand
March 2024
Introduction: Platelet transfusions are frequently used in intensive care unit (ICU) patients, but contemporary epidemiological data are sparse. We aim to present contemporary international data on the use of platelet transfusions in adult ICU patients with thrombocytopenia.
Methods: This is a protocol and statistical analysis plan for a post hoc sub-study of 504 thrombocytopenic patients from the 'Thrombocytopenia and platelet transfusions in ICU patients: an international inception cohort study (PLOT-ICU)'.
Intensive Care Med
November 2023
Tumor patients nowadays show significantly improved survival rates due to advancements in modern intensive care medicine, particularly in the case of organ failure. The previous reluctance towards implementing intensive medical care measures in patients with a tumorous disease is no longer justified. For successful intensive care treatment, the timing and the mode of admission along with the specific intensive care measures and underlying organ dysfunction(s) are crucial factors for the prognosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA growing number of patients are living with cancer or have a history of cancer leading to increasing adverse effects of treatment or disease necessitating emergency department (ED) consultation. Long-term cancer survivors are at higher risk of comorbidities causing a substantial increase in health care resource utilization. The most frequent reasons for cancer-related ED visits are dyspnea, fever, pain, gastrointestinal or neurological symptoms leading to high hospital and intensive care unit admission rates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCombined advances in haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and intensive care management have improved the survival of patients with haematological malignancies admitted to the intensive care unit. In cases of refractory respiratory failure or refractory cardiac failure, these advances have led to a renewed interest in advanced life support therapies, such as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), previously considered inappropriate for these patients due to their poor prognosis. Given the scarcity of evidence-based guidelines on the use of ECMO in patients receiving HCT and the need to provide equitable and sustainable access to ECMO, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization, and the International ECMO Network aimed to develop an expert consensus statement on the use of ECMO in adult patients receiving HCT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic graft-vs-host-disease (cGvHD) is the most relevant long-term complication after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) with major impact on non-relapse mortality, but data on intensive care unit (ICU) outcome are missing. In this retrospective, multicenter study we analyzed 174 adult HSCT recipients with cGvHD requiring intensive care treatment. Skin, pulmonary, liver, and intestinal involvement were present in 76.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Thrombocytopenia is frequent in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and has been associated with worse outcome. Platelet transfusions are often used in the management of ICU patients with severe thrombocytopenia. However, the reported frequencies of thrombocytopenia and platelet transfusion practices in the ICU vary considerably.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Patients with hematologic disease are at high risk of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 due to disease-inherent and therapy-related immunodeficiency. Whether infection with the SARS-CoV2 omicron variant leads to attenuated disease severity in these patients is currently unknown.
Methods: We assessed clinical and laboratory parameters in 61 patients with underlying hematologic conditions with a SARS-CoV2 omicron variant infection confirmed by nucleic acid amplification testing.
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation is a frequent complication after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), whose impact on clinical outcome, in particular on leukemic relapse, is controversial. We retrospectively analyzed 687 HCT recipients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and ciclosporin-based immunosuppression to better understand the differential impact of CMV on transplant outcomes depending on AML disease stage and in vivo T cell depletion with antithymocyte globulin (ATG). Without ATG, CMV reactivation associated with significantly reduced relapse, yet its effect was more pronounced for advanced disease AML (P = .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArtif Organs
August 2021
Acute respiratory failure (ARF) is the main reason for ICU admission following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Extracorporeal CO removal (ECCO R) can be used as an adjunct to mechanical ventilation in patients with severe hypercapnia but has not been assessed in HSCT recipients. Retrospective analysis of all allogeneic HSCT recipients ≥18 years treated with ECCO R at two HSCT centers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrials
October 2020
Objectives: Primary objectives • To assess the time from randomisation until an improvement within 84 days defined as two points on a seven point ordinal scale or live discharge from the hospital in high-risk patients (group 1 to group 4) with SARS-CoV-2 infection requiring hospital admission by infusion of plasma from subjects after convalescence of SARS-CoV-2 infection or standard of care. Secondary objectives • To assess overall survival, and the overall survival rate at 28 56 and 84 days. • To assess SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance and load as well as antibody titres.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcute chest syndrome (ACS) in adult patients with sickle cell disease represents a leading cause of death. It is characterized by a new density on chest X-ray accompanied by fever and/or respiratory symptoms. Currently, 49 adult patients with sickle cell disease are registered at our department.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProphylaxis of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) remains challenging. Because prospective randomized trials of in-vivo T cell depletion using anti-T-lymphocyte globulin (ATLG) in addition to a calcineurin inhibitor and methotrexate (MTX) led to conflicting outcome results, we evaluated the impact of ATLG on clinical outcome, lymphocyte- and immune reconstitution survival models. In total, 1500 consecutive patients with hematologic malignancies received matched unrelated donor (MUD) HCT with cyclosporin and MTX (N = 723, 48%) or with additional ATLG (N = 777, 52%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDtsch Med Wochenschr
September 2019
Despite treatment options of cancer patients have been improved, the treatment of complications is usually very complex and often includes intensive care unit admission. Infections play a major role here. Risk patients and factors, timely detection of infections and septic states, diagnostic options and treatment options in the management of these cancer patients will be presented in this paper.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: With Sepsis-3, the increase in sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) as a clinical score for the identification of patients with sepsis and quickSOFA (qSOFA) for the identification of patients at risk of sepsis outside the intensive care unit (ICU) were introduced in 2016. However, their validity has been questioned, and their applicability in different settings and subgroups, such as hematological cancer patients, remains unclear. We therefore assessed the validity of SOFA, qSOFA, and the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria regarding the diagnosis of sepsis and the prediction of in-hospital mortality in a multicenter cohort of hematological cancer patients treated on ICU and non-ICU settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe author name Philipp Wohlfarth was incorrectly spelled as Philipp Wohlfahrth in the original version of this article.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Cardiovasc Pharmacol
January 2019
Levosimendan is an inodilator that promotes cardiac contractility primarily through calcium sensitization of cardiac troponin C and vasodilatation via opening of adenosine triphosphate-sensitive potassium (KATP) channels in vascular smooth muscle cells; the drug also exerts organ-protective effects through a similar effect on mitochondrial KATP channels. This pharmacological profile identifies levosimendan as a drug that may have applications in a wide range of critical illness situations encountered in intensive care unit medicine: hemodynamic support in cardiogenic or septic shock; weaning from mechanical ventilation or from extracorporeal membrane oxygenation; and in the context of cardiorenal syndrome. This review, authored by experts from 9 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland), examines the clinical and experimental data for levosimendan in these situations and concludes that, in most instances, the evidence is encouraging, which is not the case with other cardioactive and vasoactive drugs routinely used in the intensive care unit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite significant advances in the treatment of complications requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission, ICU mortality remains high for patients after allogeneic stem cell transplantation. We evaluated the role of thrombocytopenia and poor graft function in allogeneic stem cell recipients receiving ICU treatments along with established prognostic ICU markers in order to identify patients at risk for severe complications. At ICU admission, clinical and laboratory data of 108 allogeneic stem cell transplanted ICU patients were collected and retrospectively analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor patients aged 60 years or older, the treatment of relapsed aggressive B-cell lymphomas remains challenging. The purpose of this retrospective analysis was to evaluate the results of the R-ICE (rituximab, ifosfamide, carboplatin, etoposide) protocol alone as compared to R-ICE followed by high-dose chemotherapy with autologous transplantation. The 3-year progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates in 17 patients receiving R-ICE without transplantation were 32% (95% confidence interval (CI): 8.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF