Critical Care Medicine: Evolution and Ethical Dilemmas

Yesterday, The Lancet posted a series of three papers about intensive care medicine. The papers describe the evolution of the specialty, the demand for and ability to supply appropriate levels of care, and some of the commonly faced ethical dilemmas and challenges. These topics are apt in this period of economic constraint. Intensive care medicine consumes a considerable proportion of health-care resources and these costs will need to be justified. The appropriateness and effectiveness of the care provided will need to be improved to ensure that these resources are directed to patients most in need of them. 

Intensive care medicine: a specialty coming to LIFE

Rui Paulo Moreno, Andrew Rhodes

Critical care and the global burden of critical illness in adults

Neill K J Adhikari, Robert A Fowler, Satish Bhagwanjee, Gordon D Rubenfeld

Critical care has evolved from treatment of poliomyelitis victims with respiratory failure in an intensive care unit to treatment of severely ill patients irrespective of location or specific technology. Population-based studies in the developed world suggest that the burden of critical illness is higher than generally appreciated and will increase as the population ages. Critical care capacity has long been needed in the developing world, and efforts to improve the care of the critically ill in these settings are starting to occur. Expansion of critical care to handle the consequences of an ageing population, natural disasters, conflict, inadequate primary care, and higher-risk medical therapies will be challenged by high costs at a time of economic constraint. To meet this challenge, investigators in this discipline will need to measure the global burden of critical illness and available critical-care resources, and develop both preventive and therapeutic interventions that are generalisable across countries.

Ethics and end-of-life care for adults in the intensive care unit

J Randall Curtis, Jean-Louis Vincent

The intensive care unit (ICU) is where patients are given some of the most technologically advanced life-sustaining treatments, and where difficult decisions are made about the usefulness of such treatments. The substantial regional variability in these ethical decisions is a result of many factors, including religious and cultural beliefs. Because most critically ill patients lack the capacity to make decisions, family and other individuals often act as the surrogate decision makers, and in many regions communication between the clinician and family is central to decision making in the ICU. Elsewhere, involvement of the family is reduced and that of the physicians is increased. End-of-life care is associated with increased burnout and distress among clinicians working in the ICU. Since many deaths in the ICU are preceded by a decision to withhold or withdraw life support, high-quality decision making and end-of-life care are essential in all regions, and can improve patient and family outcomes, and also retention of clinicians working in the ICU. To make such a decision requires adequate training, good communication between the clinician and family, and the collaboration of a well functioning interdisciplinary team.

Critical care: advances and future perspectives

Jean-Louis Vincent, Mervyn Singer

Intensive care offers a standard of monitoring, intervention, and organ support that cannot be readily delivered in a general ward. Its expansion in the past few decades, including the creation of emergency and outreach teams, emphasises that intensive care has an increasingly prominent role within the hospital. Although outcomes are clearly improving, intensive care remains a nascent specialty in which we are still learning how to harness a powerful ability to manipulate physiology, biochemistry, and immunology to achieve best outcomes for the patient. The results of many multicentre studies have not lent support to, or have even confounded, expectations, drawing attention to several issues related to patient heterogeneity, trial design, and elucidation of underlying pathophysiological processes. However, these results have generated constructive introspection and reappraisal of treatments and management strategies that have benefited the patient. In addition to the medical, financial, and logistical challenges in the future, exciting opportunities will arise as new developments in diagnostic tests, therapeutic interventions, and technology are used to exploit an increasing awareness of how critical illness should be managed.