Early surgical excision is likely to be the most significant individual variable to imporve the outcome of a patient (adult or child) with a critical burn.  Nevertheless, many nonburn physicians still want to apply to 1970 treatment paradigms to this population of injured patients.   This episode will hopefull replace these falsehoods with fact supported in the literature. 

Not feeding an injured or ill patient is not that same as a normal individual who is fasting.   A pound of weight loss in the stress patient is significantly different than a pound of weight loss in someone on a diet.  A basic understanding of stress metabolism is needed prior to a discussion of nutrition. 

When should a patient receive a transfuse of blood? What is an acceptable hemoglobin concentration in an ICU patient and should we use EPO?   Summer is a time when the blood banks often have a single day's worth of blood.  Perhaps with more conservative transfusion practices we can avoid or certainly help with some of the blood shortages.   Everyone wants to put patients on Epo, but does it increase the hemoglobin concentration enough to off set its high cost?

Excessive fluid resuscitations lead to horrible complications such as abdominal compartment syndrome. This article takes a critical look and challanges many of our practices in fluid resuscitation of burn patients. 

Renal replacement therapy (RRT) is rather a confusing topic.  What do all those initials mean and why use one therapy over another?  This podcast will explain the difference between intermittent and continous.   What are the various forms of continuous and how do they differ?   What are the concepts of ultrafiltration, diffusion, and convection?  These questions will be answered in this introduction to renal replacement.