Textbook of Post-ICU Medicine

By: Robert D. Stevens, Nicholas Hart, Margaret S. Herridge

ISBN-13: 9780199653461
ISBN-10: 0199653461
Publisher: Academic
Published date: 2014
Surviving critical illness is not always the happy ending that we imagine for patients. Intensive care unit (ICU) teams have traditionally focused on short term goals such as stabilizing or reversing organ system dysfunction, with little understanding of what became of patients once they left the ICU. However, research conducted in recent years has demonstrated that many ICU survivors can suffer from ill health and mental health issues for months or years to follow. The Textbook of Post-ICU Medicine: The Legacy of Critical Care identifies the long term outcomes of ICU and the steps that can be taken to improve patients’ health and wellbeing. Describing the major clinical syndromes affecting ICU survivors, the book delineates established or postulated biological mechanisms of the post-acute recovery process, and discusses strategies for treatment and rehabilitation to promote recovery in the ICU and in the long term. The book serves as a unique reference for general practitioners, internists and nurses caring for long term ICU survivors as well as specialists in intensive care medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and rehabilitation medicine.