Rapid and accurate determination of body weight in adult intensive care patients is very important for both calculating target tidal volume during invasive mechanical ventilation support and dose dependent drug administration. In this patient group, measuring actual body weight with a calibrated scale by standing the patient up is often impossible due to acute illness. Instead, estimated body weight determined by health care personnel or estimated body weights calculated according to anthropometric measurements are used. These calculations have some limitations in showing actual body weight, and there is some controversial information in current literature regarding their validity in critically ill patients. There is newly developed patient transfer scale called Marsden M-999® manufactured by Marsden Weighing Machine Group Ltd, which has the advantage of being used in patients who are unable to stand up, in rapidly and accurately measuring the current body weight in critically ill patients. This study aimed to evaluate the validity of these methods by comparing the body weights calculated by visual estimation and various anthropometric methods in critically ill Turkish patients with the actual weight measured by the mentioned scale.
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determining actual weight
Timeframe: Actual body weight measured with bathroom scales and patient transfer scales in standing patients on the day of hospital; up to 8 weeks for purpose of reaching total patients number of 100
determining the ideal estimated body weight in critically ill patients
Timeframe: Actual and estimated weight of patients determined on the first day of intensive care unit; up to 6 months for purpose of reaching total patients number of 100