Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

Welcome to the 516th Critical Care Reviews Newsletter, bringing you the best critical care research and open access articles from across the medical literature over the past seven days.

The highlights of this week's edition are randomised controlled trials on the early treatment of COVID-19 with anakinra guided by soluble urokinase plasminogen receptor plasma levels & the effect of anti-interleukin drugs in patients with COVID-19 and signs of cytokine release syndrome; systematic reviews and meta analyses on methods of weaning from mechanical ventilation & thiamine supplementation in critically ill patients; and observational studies on the impact of ICU transfers on the mortality rate of patients with COVID-19 & waning immunity after the BNT162b2 vaccine in Israel.

There are also guidelines on high-flow nasal cannula in acute respiratory failure & hyperkalemia management in the emergency department; narrative reviews on brain injury after cardiac arrest & esophageal variceal hemorrhage; and commentaries on whether hypothermia is more neuroprotective than avoiding fever after cardiac arrest & vasospasm-induced spreading depolarization and/or spreading-depolarization-induced vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage. If you only have time to read one review article this week, try this one on seizure management in the intensive care unit.

Our next major trial result livestream will be the COCA trial, investigating the use of calcium in out of hospital cardiac arrest. The date and time are to be confirmed.

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