Critical Care Medicine

Critical care medicine is a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and management of life threatening conditions requiring organ support and invasive monitoring.

Patients requiring critical care may require support for instability, airway or respiratory compromise, acute renal failure or possibly even multi-organ failure. They may also need to be admitted for invasive monitoring, such as the crucial hours after a major surgery.

A specialist who practices critical/ intensive care medicine is known as an intensivist and has been trained and board certified in anesthesiology, surgery, internal medicine or pediatrics. Physicians with this specialty are familiar with the surgical and medical problems that put patients in the intensive care unit and have the knowledge and experience with cardiovascular and respiratory management that is required to maintain critically ill patients.

The care of critically ill patients can raise many complicated ethical and social issues, and our intensivists are competent in areas such as end-of-life decisions, advanced directives, estimating prognosis and counseling patients and their families all along the way!

Some of the Critical Care services our physicians provide in the hospital setting include, but not limited to:

• Emergency endotracheal intubation
• Ventilation assistance and management
• Bronchoscopy procedures
• Lung biopsy procedures
• Chest tube management/placement
• Arterial catheter line placement/management
• Thoracocentesis
• Paracentesis
• Tracheotomy tube management