Intensive-care Medicine - Organ Systems

Organ Systems

Intensive care usually takes a system by system approach to treatment, rather than the SOAP (subjective, objective, analysis, plan) approach of high dependency care. The nine key systems (see below) are each considered on an observation-intervention-impression basis to produce a daily plan. As well as the key systems, intensive-care treatment raises other issues including psychological health, pressure points, mobilisation and physiotherapy, and secondary infections.

The nine key IC systems are (alphabetically): cardiovascular system, central nervous system, endocrine system, gastro-intestinal tract (and nutritional condition), hematology, microbiology (including sepsis status), peripheries (and skin), renal (and metabolic), respiratory system.

The provision of intensive care is, in general, administered in a specialized unit of a hospital called the intensive-care unit (ICU) or critical-care unit (CCU). Many hospitals also have designated intensive-care areas for certain specialities of medicine, such as the coronary intensive-care unit (CCU or sometimes CICU, depending on hospital) for heart disease, medical intensive-care unit (MICU), surgical intensive-care unit (SICU), pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU), neuroscience critical-care unit (NCCU), overnight intensive-recovery (OIR), shock/trauma intensive-care unit (STICU), neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), and other units as dictated by the needs and available resources of each hospital. The naming is not rigidly standardized. For a time in the early 1960s, it was not clear that specialized intensive care units were needed, so intensive-care resources (see below) were brought to the room of the patient that needed the additional monitoring, care, and resources. It became rapidly evident, however, that a fixed location where intensive-care resources and personnel were available provided better care than ad hoc provision of intensive care services spread throughout a hospital.