Beyond the Nuts and Bolts: Tele-Critical Care Patients, Workflows, and Activity Patterns.

Background: Tele-critical care (TCC) adoption has been slow since its emergence in the early 2000s. The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in telemedicine and may spur expansion or development of new TCC programs. This narrative addresses the Cleveland Clinic TCC service, (eHospital) to promote exchange of ideas to continually optimize the practice for current and future users. Methods: A descriptive narrative methodology is used in this report. Results: Cleveland Clinic's eHospital was established in 2014 to support nighttime critical care across system hospitals. It encompasses a tiered system of two-way audiovisual communication, telemetry, software platform that integrates the electronic health record, and a proprietary risk stratification algorithm for targeted electronic surveillance. The TCC team includes intensivists, advanced care providers, and registered nurses. Three coverage models evolved depending on onsite clinician availability. More than 133,000 patients have been served by eHospital to date, and span the typical spectrum of critical illness. Along with universal monitoring, ∼18% of patients received active interventions, the most common of which are categorized. Patterns of activity, typical workflows, and adaptations of bedside best practices are also described. Bookending the work shift are sign outs focused on pending critical issues, unstable patients, and those who can be triaged out of the intensive care unit. In between, TCC teams round periodically and interact with bedside teams. Conclusions: TCC adoption has proceeded slowly. Some acceleration is anticipated in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world. Our experience highlights operational practices that can facilitate successful TCC practice.

Monitoring intravascular volumes to direct hypertensive, hypervolemic therapy in a patient with vasospasm.

The common therapeutic approach to patients, who develop vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage, is usually composed of hypertension, hypervolemia, and hemodilution (HHH). This therapy often leads to cardiopulmonary complications, including significant heart failure and pulmonary edema. We describe a 40-year-old woman who developed vasospasm 8 days after surgery for clipping an aneurysm, following a large subarachnoid hemorrhage. The patient required HHH therapy with a very high blood pressure to optimize her clinical neurologic status, but she started to develop pulmonary edema resulting from this therapy. This manifested as a need for increasing oxygen to maintain a normal arterial saturation. To avoid further hemodynamic compromise, we used a new monitor of cardiac function to measure intravascular volumes and quantify pulmonary edema to help titrate the fluid management of a patient in severe vasospasm. We conclude that monitoring volumes with the PiCCO cardiac monitor can help make clinical decisions in patients requiring HHH. This enables maintaining a hypertensive and hypervolemic state while avoiding cardiopulmonary complications such as heart failure and pulmonary edema. It may also help prevent the need for mechanical ventilation in these situations.