Chronic Critical Illness: Best Practices, Call for Research

In the latest issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Judith Nelson and colleagues provide a very nice overview of chronic critical illness.  From the abstract: “Although advances in intensive care have enabled more patients to survive an acute critical illness, they also have created a large and growing population of chronically critically ill patients with prolonged dependence on mechanical ventilation and other intensive care therapies. Chronic critical illness is a devastating condition: mortality exceeds that for most malignancies, and functional dependence persists for most survivors. Costs of treating the chronically critically ill in the United States already exceed $20 billion and are increasing.”Source : http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2010/08/chronic-critical-illness-best-practices.html