Purpose
This study aimed to identify the characteristics and efficacy of Intermittent Pneumatic Compression (IPC) interventions for preventing Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) in critically ill patients. Methods: The CENTRAL, Embase, OVID, CINAHL, KMbase, KoreaMed, and KoreaScience databases were searched from January 7 to 11, 2023. The search included all records from the inception of each database up to January 2023, with publication language restrictions to English and Korean. Three reviewers independently carried out the entire process, which included data search, quality assessment, and data extraction. Results: Out of 1066 articles, six Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) were included. One of the four studies that reported on the incidence of DVT, and one of the six studies that measured the incidence of Pulmonary Embolism (PE), found that IPC alone was effective in reducing the incidence of DVT and PE. One of the four studies that reported on VTE incidence demonstrated a significant reduction in VTE incidence with a triple intervention of IPC, anticoagulants, and elastic compression stockings compared to a combined intervention of anticoagulants and graduated compression stockings. Four studies that reported data on the incidence of bleeding reported no effect on reducing bleeding. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that IPC interventions may reduce the incidence of DVT as a preventive strategy in critically ill patients. Further RCTs are necessary to evaluate the effect of IPC interventions on DVT prevention in this patient population and to provide robust evidence for critical care nursing.

Purpose
The aim of this study was to identify the knowledge structure of nursing research on heart failure in Korea.
Methods
Fifty-two studies published in Korea and 41 published abroad by domestic researches from 1988 to 2019, were included. Meaningful morphemes from the abstracts were extracted and refined, and co-occurrence matrix was generated. Using Phython 3.7 for edge weight, degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality and Gephi 0.9.2 for visualization, 571 keywords were analyzed.
Results
The core keywords were “patient”, “heart failure”, “symptom”, “function”, “quality of life”, “self-care”, and “intervention”. The sociogram identified “patient”, “heart failure”, and “symptom” as the largest node, and the edge weight between the keywords was the highest. From 1988 to 2019, keywords such as “patient”, “heart failure”, and “symptom” ranked the highest. Especially, from 2016 to 2019, “quality of life”, “NYHA”, and “medication” ranked lower, but “cognition”, “health literacy”, “behavior”, “self-efficacy”, “man”, “woman”, and “age” newly appeared or ranked higher.
Conclusion
It is recommended that Korean heart failure nursing researchers conduct researches related to self-care for symptom management of heart failure patients, especially on nursing interventions. In addition, nursing researchers should conduct studies on the cognition and health literacy related to self-care of the elderly patients with heart failure

Citations

• Images of Nurses Appeared in Media Reports Before and After Outbreak of COVID-19: Text Network Analysis and Topic Modeling
  Min Young Park, Seok Hee Jeong, Hee Sun Kim, Eun Jee Lee
  Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing.2022; 52(3): 291.     CrossRef

PURPOSE
This review aimed to determine the effectiveness of oral care using Chlorhexidine Gluconate (CHX) in Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia (VAP) in the intensive care unit.
METHODS
An electronic databases search was conducted with Ovid-MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL and four domestic databases from July 10 to 16, 2018. Two reviewers independently selected the studies; three reviewers assessed their methodological quality and extracted relevant data. We conducted a meta-analysis of the effect of CHX oral care versus placebo using the Review Manager 5.3 software program and summarized the results of intervention from the included studies.
RESULTS
Of the 512 articles identified, 17 randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria for review. The incidence of VAP differed significantly between the CHX and placebo groups (Relative Risk [RR]=0.72, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]=0.63~0.84). The pooled effects of oral care using 0.12% CHX were RR=0.65 (95% CI=0.52~0.80) and RR=0.68 (95% CI=0.54~0.86) using CHX solution, which were statistically significant. When CHX oral care was performed three times a day, the size of the effect was statistically significant (RR=0.63, 95% CI=0.40~0.99). There was no significant difference in mortality between the CHX oral care and placebo groups (RR=1.08, 95% CI=0.94~1.28).
CONCLUSION
This review provides evidence that performing oral care using a 0.12% CHX solution three times a day could decrease the incidence of VAP. For improving the quality of nursing practice, the results of this review should be used as the basis for the oral care evidence-based practice guidelines for critical patients.

Citations

• Oral Hygiene Care of Endotracheal Intubated Patients in Korean Intensive Care Units : A Scoping Review
  Jungeun Lim, Dukyoo Jung, Leeho Yoo
  Journal of Korean Critical Care Nursing.2024; 17(1): 68.     CrossRef
• Effect of 2% Chlorhexidine Bathing on the Incidence of Hospital-Acquired Infection and Multidrug-Resistant Organisms in Adult Intensive Care Unit Patients: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
  Jisu Seo, Rhayun Song
  Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing.2021; 51(4): 414.     CrossRef