Archive for date: January 28th, 2015

In this post I will present some findings and suggestions from a study performed by Vanderbilt University. The study aimed to discover how well the brain worked after people survived critical illness. I will focus on the effects of drug-induced comas in particular. The information of their study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in an article titled, “Study: Extended ICU stays cause brain damage”.

The conclusions the study made were that prolonged ICU stays caused prolonged brain damage, and that doctors at a minimum needed to use more caution when implementing drug-induced comas. A more ambitious suggestion was that there should be a culture shift in the way that hospitals handled their sickest patients in the ICU. Dr. Ely Wes, senior author of the study said, “Instead of keeping them in drug-induced comas, we can keep them awake and alert even though they are on life support.”

So, why where these suggestions made?  Well, first the study revealed that up to 30% of patients in the ICU suffer from delirium during hospitalization. The study further revealed that putting patients in drug-induced comas lengthens the delirium that patients suffer. Furthermore, deep sedation was correlated with worse cognitive scores up to three months after hospitalization. More importantly, it was discovered that the longer the patient suffered from delirium during hospitalization the higher the risk of developing dementia after discharge. 

In order to address the effects of prolonged ICU stay, and use of drug-induced comas the study suggests that hospitals keep patients alert, get them out of bed as soon as possible, and acknowledge that drug-induced comas can do more harm than good.