Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on some important aspects of the care of critically ill surgical patients Part II: Surgical intensive care units, implementation of guidelines

ABSTRACT

The first part of the critical care guidelines of the Philippine College of Surgeons (PCS) and supported by Glaxo Wellcome Philippines, Inc. dealt with resuscitation fluids, blood transfusion, assessment of volume resuscitation, nutritional support and cardiovascular support. The second part deals with the last 2 aspects identified by the Technical Working Group (TWG) namely: surgical intensive care units and implementation of guidelines. The literature search, limited to english publications. Used both electronic and manual methods. Three electronic databases were used: 1) The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2000; 2) National Library of Medicine - Medline (PubMed, no time limit): and HERDIN (Health Research and Development Information Network) Version 1, 1997 of DOST-PCHRD. Manual searching of the reference lists of review articles and some important meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was also done. The search terms used were: 1) Cochrane library: surgical intensive care, guidelines implementation, 2) Medline: surgical intensive care, 3) HERDIN: intensive care. Titles of all articles were printed and all members of the TWG went over the list and checked the titles of articles whose abstracts they felt should be read. The abstracts of all checked articles were printed. The printed abstracts were given to the members, who then decided which articles were to be included for full text retrieval. The full texts were obtained from the University of the Philippines Manila Library, and were appraised using standard forms. (Author)