Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Following on from the recent post on Heparin, today we’re going to talk about one of its more significant complications – Heparin Induced Thromboyctopaenia or HIT for short. In my notes I had it down as HITTS for hepain induced thrombotic thrombocytopaenia syndrome which I kind of liked as it included the important presence of thrombosis in the context of low platelets. But HIT is definitely snappier There are incidentally 2 forms of H...
Mar 03, 2025•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Following on from our initial post in this entirely accidental series on “things you don’t want to find in the chest drain” we turn our eyes (if not our noses) to empyema. Many penumonias will develope a parapneumonic effusion. This is largely reactive and inflammatory but by no means does it mean there is infection. On the other hand parapneumonic effusions can become the seed for an empyema proper, something seen relatively commonly ...
Oct 14, 2024•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Today we look at quite a niche topic, that of chylothorax. We are used to many things in the pleural space, like simple fluid or blood or air but the presence of the myseterious substance chyle is a much more unusual and note worthy event. As a reminder of the basics which I of course knew implicitly and definitely did not have to resort to wikipedia to check… Chyle is largely formed in the small intestine as the gut transports free fa...
Sep 30, 2024•4 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . We’re going to cover a bit of an environmental/tox topic today and look at carbon monoxide poisoning from Oh’s manual chapter 83 on burns. I have previously covered this on the old tasty morsels of EM series back when i was doing my EM fellowship exams. As you no doubt remember from school chemistry classes, carbon monoxide is a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas produced when combustion occurs with insufficient oxygen. We’re likely ...
Jun 10, 2024•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . We’ve been talking about pulmonary hypertension, last time we had a pretty broad overview with a focus on group 1 or pulmonary arterial hypertension. This time we’re going to go through some management strategies that might keep you between the hedges on a night on call or a fellowship exam viva. We briefly mentioned the PH specific drugs that someone might be on. The evidence base for these is almost exclusively in group 1 PH. But wha...
May 27, 2024•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . This time we’re looking at pulmonary hypertension. Mainly cause I recently had to give a talk on it so it’s fresh in my rapidly diminishing brain cells and thought I should get it all written down before I forget it. We’re going to try it as a 2 parter. Part 1 will cover a broad overview of pulmonary hypertension and part 2 will focus on management strategies for a PH patient in the ICU. Saying a patient has PH does not really tell you...
May 13, 2024•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Last time i was butchering my way through a diagnostic approach to hyponatraemia, particularly the forms likely to end up in the critical care end of the hospital. This time we’ll take a punt at how you might approach management. In an ideal world of course you would have all of the diagnostic tests back and you’ve been able to make a very solid diagnosis of the cause of hyponatraemia and you would institute a bespoke treatment course ...
Apr 29, 2024•5 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Today we cover an incredibly common inpatient issue – hypnatraemia. We’ll often find 1 or 2 of these in our high dependency unit at any given time, mainly due to the requirement for frequent testing of Na levels that seems beyond the remit of normal ward level care. The approach I describe here is neither comprehensive or especially robust but it is how I approach it. Caveat emptor and all that. The over bearing demyelinating elephant ...
Apr 16, 2024•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Today we’ll cover some key exam content, all be it not something you’re likely to run into in the ICU too often. The thyroid is a deceptive little organ, tucked in the neck, quietly secreting hormones and interfering in negative feedback loops. It usually restricts its mischief to outpatient clinics by running hot or cold on a chronic basis, occasionally hypertrophying and interfering with its more important neighbour the airway. But e...
Jan 22, 2024•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast . Today we’ll talk about one of the niche and shall I say “advanced” in inverted commas therapies in intensive care practice. ECMO. And to be precise we’ll be talking about VV ECMO. Indeed saying that you are “putting someone on ECMO” is a woefully incomplete sentence as the support and physiological difference between venovenous ECMO and venoarterial ECMO is really rather profound. The post will be an intentionally broad description of ...
Jan 08, 2024•12 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Way back in the way back in tasty morsel number 43 we discussed inotropes and vasopressors but there was a noticeable AHD analogue shaped hole in that post that i ... Read More »
Oct 30, 2023•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re going to verge into challenging territory for an audio podcast in that we’re going to the discuss the very visual topic of dynamic LV outflow tract obstruction. This ... Read More »
Oct 16, 2023•10 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Following hot on the heels of tasty morsel number 72 on cardio renal syndrome is its partner in nephron injury: hepatorenal syndrome. This gets covered in a sub section of ... Read More »
Sep 18, 2023•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we tackle a somewhat nebulous syndrome. Something we throw around with a few hand wavy explanations but often light on detail. Hopefully in a few minutes you’ll at least ... Read More »
Jul 03, 2023•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Oh Chapter 37 is dedicated to NIV in the ICU and is probably worth some time given that this is a common respiratory support both in the ICU and throughout ... Read More »
Mar 27, 2023•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re covering the ambitious topic of CRRT in the ICU. Something that occupies a central part of the daily job, but also occupies Oh Chapter 48, Irwin and Rippe ... Read More »
Mar 13, 2023•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Nestled towards the end of Oh Chapter 51 we have a section dedicated to SAH. Given that a lot of ICU bed days are given over to managing SAH, I ... Read More »
Feb 06, 2023•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we are going to talk about triggering on the ventilator. Now given the ubiquity of the word “triggering” in contemporary discourse I must confess that i do find it ... Read More »
Jan 23, 2023•10 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we are going to do our best to charm the yellow snake of the intensive care unit and cover the pulmonary artery floatation catheter. Like a lot, indeed practically ... Read More »
Dec 05, 2022•10 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. The subject of solid tumours in the ICU gets a whole chapter in Oh’s hallowed pages, number 46. I suppose the term solid is in place to distinguish it from ... Read More »
Oct 17, 2022•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. This time we look at Oh Chapter 52, focused on cerebral protection. There is, I must admit some repetition and cross over here, particularly with tasty morsels 20 and 39 ... Read More »
Oct 17, 2022•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. In yet another departure from the stone tablets of Oh’s manual, today we’ll talk a little about one of favourite gram +ve cocci: staphylococcus aureus. Diagnosis and management of infections ... Read More »
Aug 01, 2022•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re not so much looking at a chapter of Oh’s manual but at the physiologic concept of respiratory compliance. I approach this with a degree of trepidation as the ... Read More »
Jul 18, 2022•5 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re going to talk about some of the basics of some of our favorite drugs intensive care – the diuretics. As always this is planned to be a brief ... Read More »
May 30, 2022•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re looking at asthma. In reality I find this is much more commonly discussed than seen in real life. No doubt this is due in part, to an improvement ... Read More »
May 16, 2022•8 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Oh chapter 26 devotes a whole chapter to this and for those of us in cardiac units the arrival of several post cardiac surgery patients a day in your unit ... Read More »
Apr 04, 2022•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re talking about dead space. While it may sound like something from The Expanse, we’re actually talking about the physiological concept of dead space here. This is pretty core ... Read More »
Mar 21, 2022•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Of the many things I poorly understand, I suspect that haematology holds a special place. Knowing the intricacies of the haematological malignancies was not exactly core knowledge for emergency medicine ... Read More »
Mar 07, 2022•6 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we’re looking at a small section of Oh Chapter 58 covering myasthenia gravis. I don’t think I’ve ever looked after a true myasthenic crisis in the ICU. Likely because ... Read More »
Feb 21, 2022•7 min
Welcome back to the tasty morsels of critical care podcast. Today we look at everyone’s favorite mould – aspergillus. We see a number of fungal infections in the ICU, most commonly it’ll be the yeasts – forms of candida. Yeasts ... Read More »
Jan 10, 2022•7 min
