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Causes of coma and their evolution in the medical intensive care unit

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Hélène Owczarek for major technical support.

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Correspondence to Nicolas Weiss.

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Supplementary Table: Baseline characteristics of the patients.

The following data were recorded: age, sex, preexisting chronic diseases stratified according to the criteria of McCabe (0, no disease; 1, nonfatal disease; 2, ultimately fatal disease (<5 years) and 3, fatal disease (<1 year)), presence of an immunodeficiency (defined as solid organ or stem cells transplantation, corticosteroids, active chemotherapy, or AIDS), severity of illness, estimated using the acute physiology assessment and chronic health evaluation (APACHE II) score and the simplified acute physiology score (SAPS 2), origin of the patients (Service d’Aide Medical d’Urgence (SAMU), emergency department, another hospital department or another ICU), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) at admission, need for mechanical ventilation, and length of mechanical ventilation.

Among metabolic brain dysfunction, severe hyponatremia was defined as blood sodium <120 mmol/L, severe hypernatremia as blood sodium >150 mmol/L, and severe hypercalcemia as blood calcium >3 mmol/L. Continuous variables are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Categorical variables are expressed as values and percentages of the group they are derived. Univariate analysis was performed to compare the variables between different groups using χ2 or using Fisher exact tests when needed for categorical variables, and analysis of variance for continuous variables. P values that were less than 0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance. All analyses were performed with JMP 8.0 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC).

Supplementary material 1 (DOC 64 kb)

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Weiss, N., Regard, L., Vidal, C. et al. Causes of coma and their evolution in the medical intensive care unit. J Neurol 259, 1474–1477 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6388-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6388-z

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