Journal collection

In patients with acute circulatory failure, the decision to give fluids or not should not be taken lightly. The risk of overzealous fluid administration has been clearly established. Moreover, volume expansion does not always increase cardiac output as one expects. Thus, after the very initial phase and/or if fluid losses are not obvious, predicting fluid responsiveness should be the first step of fluid strategy. For this purpose, the central venous pressure as well as other "static" markers of preload has been used for decades, but they are not reliable...

Many emergency departments have implemented sepsis protocols since the 2001 publication of results from the early goal-directed therapy trial, which showed early targeted resuscitation lowers mortality. As part of an attempt to improve clinical and operational outcomes for emergency departments across British Columbia, we reviewed sepsis management literature and considered sepsis protocol implementation in the province’s emergency departments. During the literature review we found that many observational studies confirmed an association between implementation of emergency sepsis protocols and decreased mortality...