Life Support Care
Care provided patients requiring extraordinary therapeutic measures in order to sustain and prolong life.
Life Support Systems
Systems that provide all or most of the items necessary for maintaining life and health. Provisions are made for the supplying of oxygen, food, water, temperature and pressure control, disposition of carbon dioxide and body waste. The milieu may be a spacecraft, a submarine, or the surface of the moon. In medical care, usually under hospital conditions, LIFE SUPPORT CARE is available. (From Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary)
Advanced Cardiac Life Support
The use of sophisticated methods and equipment to treat cardiopulmonary arrest. Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) includes the use of specialized equipment to maintain the airway, early defibrillation and pharmacological therapy.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
The artificial substitution of heart and lung action as indicated for HEART ARREST resulting from electric shock, DROWNING, respiratory arrest, or other causes. The two major components of cardiopulmonary resuscitation are artificial ventilation (RESPIRATION, ARTIFICIAL) and closed-chest CARDIAC MASSAGE.
Withholding Treatment
Withholding or withdrawal of a particular treatment or treatments, often (but not necessarily) life-prolonging treatment, from a patient or from a research subject as part of a research protocol. The concept is differentiated from REFUSAL TO TREAT, where the emphasis is on the health professional's or health facility's refusal to treat a patient or group of patients when the patient or the patient's representative requests treatment. Withholding of life-prolonging treatment is usually indexed only with EUTHANASIA, PASSIVE, unless the distinction between withholding and withdrawing treatment, or the issue of withholding palliative rather than curative treatment, is discussed.
Heart Arrest
Cessation of heart beat or MYOCARDIAL CONTRACTION. If it is treated within a few minutes, heart arrest can be reversed in most cases to normal cardiac rhythm and effective circulation.
Euthanasia, Passive
Failing to prevent death from natural causes, for reasons of mercy by the withdrawal or withholding of life-prolonging treatment.
Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation
Application of a life support system that circulates the blood through an oxygenating system, which may consist of a pump, a membrane oxygenator, and a heat exchanger. Examples of its use are to assist victims of smoke inhalation injury, respiratory failure, and cardiac failure.
Traumatology
The medical specialty which deals with WOUNDS and INJURIES as well as resulting disability and disorders from physical traumas.
Quality of Life
Manikins
Extracorporeal Circulation
Defibrillators
Cardiac electrical stimulators that apply brief high-voltage electroshocks to the HEART. These stimulators are used to restore normal rhythm and contractile function in hearts of patients who are experiencing VENTRICULAR FIBRILLATION or ventricular tachycardia (TACHYCARDIA, VENTRICULAR) that is not accompanied by a palpable PULSE. Some defibrillators may also be used to correct certain noncritical dysrhythmias (called synchronized defibrillation or CARDIOVERSION), using relatively low-level discharges synchronized to the patient's ECG waveform. (UMDNS, 2003)
Medical Futility
The absence of a useful purpose or useful result in a diagnostic procedure or therapeutic intervention. The situation of a patient whose condition will not be improved by treatment or instances in which treatment preserves permanent unconsciousness or cannot end dependence on intensive medical care. (From Ann Intern Med 1990 Jun 15;112(12):949)
Emergency Medical Services
Status Asthmaticus
Resuscitation
The restoration to life or consciousness of one apparently dead. (Dorland, 27th ed)
Ecological Systems, Closed
Systems that provide for the maintenance of life in an isolated living chamber through reutilization of the material available, in particular, by means of a cycle wherein exhaled carbon dioxide, urine, and other waste matter are converted chemically or by photosynthesis into oxygen, water, and food. (NASA Thesaurus, 1988)
Emergency Medicine
Emergency Medical Technicians
Paramedical personnel trained to provide basic emergency care and life support under the supervision of physicians and/or nurses. These services may be carried out at the site of the emergency, in the ambulance, or in a health care institution.
First Aid
Heart Massage
Rhythmic compression of the heart by pressure applied manually over the sternum (closed heart massage) or directly to the heart through an opening in the chest wall (open heart massage). It is done to reinstate and maintain circulation. (Dorland, 28th ed)
Professional-Family Relations
The interactions between the professional person and the family.
Right to Die
Legal Guardians
Education, Nursing, Continuing
Educational programs designed to inform nurses of recent advances in their fields.
Judicial Role
The kind of action or activity proper to the judiciary, particularly its responsibility for decision making.
Advance Directives
Respiratory Insufficiency
Hospital Rapid Response Team
Multidisciplinary team most frequently consisting of INTENSIVE CARE UNIT trained personnel who are available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for evaluation of patients who develop signs or symptoms of severe clinical deterioration.
Decision Making
Wills
Legal documents that are declarations of individuals' wishes regarding the disposal of their property or estate after death; esp: written instruments, legally executed, by which dispositions are made of estates. LIVING WILLS are written declarations regarding prolongation of life by extraordinary means.
Patient Simulation
Intensive Care Units
Resuscitation Orders
Instructions issued by a physician pertaining to the institution, continuation, or withdrawal of life support measures. The concept includes policies, laws, statutes, decisions, guidelines, and discussions that may affect the issuance of such orders.
Neonatal Nursing
Electric Countershock
Certification
Compliance with a set of standards defined by non-governmental organizations. Certification is applied for by individuals on a voluntary basis and represents a professional status when achieved, e.g., certification for a medical specialty.
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
Occurrence of heart arrest in an individual when there is no immediate access to medical personnel or equipment.
Clinical Competence
Contracts
Life
The state that distinguishes organisms from inorganic matter, manifested by growth, metabolism, reproduction, and adaptation. It includes the course of existence, the sum of experiences, the mode of existing, or the fact of being. Over the centuries inquiries into the nature of life have crossed the boundaries from philosophy to biology, forensic medicine, anthropology, etc., in creative as well as scientific literature. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed; Dr. James H. Cassedy, NLM History of Medicine Division)
Allied Health Personnel
Health care workers specially trained and licensed to assist and support the work of health professionals. Often used synonymously with paramedical personnel, the term generally refers to all health care workers who perform tasks which must otherwise be performed by a physician or other health professional.
Emergency Responders
Personnel trained to provide the initial services, care, and support in EMERGENCIES or DISASTERS.
Dissent and Disputes
Advance Directive Adherence
Compliance by health personnel or proxies with the stipulations of ADVANCE DIRECTIVES (or similar directives such as RESUSCITATION ORDERS) when patients are unable to direct their own care.
Ethics, Medical
Heart-Lung Machine
Apparatus that provides mechanical circulatory support during open-heart surgery, by passing the heart to facilitate surgery on the organ. The basic function of the machine is to oxygenate the body's venous supply of blood and then pump it back into the arterial system. The machine also provides intracardiac suction, filtration, and temperature control. Some of the more important components of these machines include pumps, oxygenators, temperature regulators, and filters. (UMDNS, 1999)
Wounds and Injuries
Ventricular Fibrillation
A potentially lethal cardiac arrhythmia that is characterized by uncoordinated extremely rapid firing of electrical impulses (400-600/min) in HEART VENTRICLES. Such asynchronous ventricular quivering or fibrillation prevents any effective cardiac output and results in unconsciousness (SYNCOPE). It is one of the major electrocardiographic patterns seen with CARDIAC ARREST.
Emergencies
Education, Medical, Continuing
Educational programs designed to inform physicians of recent advances in their field.
Questionnaires
Attitude to Death
Conceptual response of the person to the various aspects of death, which are based on individual psychosocial and cultural experience.
Proxy
Practice Guidelines as Topic
Directions or principles presenting current or future rules of policy for assisting health care practitioners in patient care decisions regarding diagnosis, therapy, or related clinical circumstances. The guidelines may be developed by government agencies at any level, institutions, professional societies, governing boards, or by the convening of expert panels. The guidelines form a basis for the evaluation of all aspects of health care and delivery.
Pediatrics
Emergency Nursing
Nursing Methodology Research
Research carried out by nurses concerning techniques and methods to implement projects and to document information, including methods of interviewing patients, collecting data, and forming inferences. The concept includes exploration of methodological issues such as human subjectivity and human experience.
Treatment Outcome
Weightlessness
Condition in which no acceleration, whether due to gravity or any other force, can be detected by an observer within a system. It also means the absence of weight or the absence of the force of gravity acting on a body. Microgravity, gravitational force between 0 and 10 -6 g, is included here. (From NASA Thesaurus, 1988)
Tissue and Organ Procurement
The administrative procedures involved with acquiring TISSUES or organs for TRANSPLANTATION through various programs, systems, or organizations. These procedures include obtaining consent from TISSUE DONORS and arranging for transportation of donated tissues and organs, after TISSUE HARVESTING, to HOSPITALS for processing and transplantation.
American Heart Association
Intensive Care
Respiration, Artificial
Any method of artificial breathing that employs mechanical or non-mechanical means to force the air into and out of the lungs. Artificial respiration or ventilation is used in individuals who have stopped breathing or have RESPIRATORY INSUFFICIENCY to increase their intake of oxygen (O2) and excretion of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Prospective Studies
Intensive Care Units, Pediatric
Hospital units providing continuous surveillance and care to acutely ill infants and children. Neonates are excluded since INTENSIVE CARE UNITS, NEONATAL is available.
Intubation, Intratracheal
Medical Staff, Hospital
Personal Autonomy
Attitude of Health Personnel
Critical Illness
A disease or state in which death is possible or imminent.
Emergency Service, Hospital
Retrospective Studies
Studies used to test etiologic hypotheses in which inferences about an exposure to putative causal factors are derived from data relating to characteristics of persons under study or to events or experiences in their past. The essential feature is that some of the persons under study have the disease or outcome of interest and their characteristics are compared with those of unaffected persons.
Brain Death
A state of prolonged irreversible cessation of all brain activity, including lower brain stem function with the complete absence of voluntary movements, responses to stimuli, brain stem reflexes, and spontaneous respirations. Reversible conditions which mimic this clinical state (e.g., sedative overdose, hypothermia, etc.) are excluded prior to making the determination of brain death. (From Adams et al., Principles of Neurology, 6th ed, pp348-9)
Nurses
Manitoba
A province of Canada, lying between the provinces of Saskatchewan and Ontario. Its capital is Winnipeg. Taking its name from Lake Manitoba, itself named for one of its islands, the name derived from Algonquian Manitou, great spirit. (From Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, 1988, p724 & Room, Brewer's Dictionary of Names, 1992, p332)
Informed Consent
Empathy
An individual's objective and insightful awareness of the feelings and behavior of another person. It should be distinguished from sympathy, which is usually nonobjective and noncritical. It includes caring, which is the demonstration of an awareness of and a concern for the good of others. (From Bioethics Thesaurus, 1992)
Education, Medical, Undergraduate
The period of medical education in a medical school. In the United States it follows the baccalaureate degree and precedes the granting of the M.D.
Death
Emergency Treatment
General Surgery
Life Change Events
United States
The term "United States" in a medical context often refers to the country where a patient or study participant resides, and is not a medical term per se, but relevant for epidemiological studies, healthcare policies, and understanding differences in disease prevalence, treatment patterns, and health outcomes across various geographic locations.