Talk:Ventilator-associated pneumonia

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JAMA has a nice article on the criteria/principles for diagnosis[1]. JFW | T@lk 20:38, 15 April 2007 (UTC) For editors: please give feedback about anything else you think should be included in the lead, or changes to the current version. Also would appreciate comments on the following areas: dx and risk factors, both sections I have been expanding and adding sources for. Any thoughts on the epidemiology and prevention sections would be welcome as well!Ktteli (talk) 16:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Overall article

Suggestions for future improvements:

1. Replace patient with "person with VAP," "person suspected of having VAP," etc.--Plm234 (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

Suggestions for future improvements:

1. I look at the lead as a brief summary of the entire article written in the simplest of language. For this reason, I think that adding a little content from each of the main article sections would help to give readers a brief overview of the topic. It would certainly help medical students if they had to quickly read up on the topic before rounds!!
2. Simplify language, e.g. "morbidity and mortality"-->increased illness, side effects, and death. "Pneumonia"-->infection of the lungs. "Critically ill"-->extremely sick, etc
3. Shorten length of sentences to easy with translation into other languages

A working version with simplified language might look something like this:
Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a type of lung infection that occurs in people who are on breathing machines in hospitals. As such, VAP typically affects critically ill persons that are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).[1] VAP is a major source of increased illness, and death. Persons with VAP have increased the lengths of ICU hospitalization and have up to a 20-30% death rate.[2] The diagnoses of VAP varies among hospitals and providers but usually requires a new area of infection in the lungs on chest x-ray plus two or more other factors. These factors include fever of >38.3 °C, a white blood cell count of >12 × 10⁹/ml, purulent secretions from the airways in the lung, and/or reduction in gas exchange.[1][3]--Plm234 (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Risk factors

I like that Ktteli added this section. A very important topic and a great start. I would suggest the following area for future improvement:

1. Shortening the length of some of the longer sentences
2. Including information of the effect size of particular risk factors, i.e. how more are people at risk from different risk factors.--Plm234 (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

doi:10.1093/cid/ciu740 - selective decontamination reduces mortality, but nothing much else does. JFW | T@lk 15:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]