Key Advances in the Treatment of the Critically Ill: 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) aims to address organ-system failures in the context of an extremely broad variety of acute and severe disease states and coexisting comorbid conditions. Accordingly, survival without severe disability may vary from <10% to >90%. Despite intense randomized controlled clinical research for several decades, only a handful of key therapeutic interventions have been shown to directly improve important and/or critical patient outcomes. Examples include lung-protective mechanical ventilation and prone positioning in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), targeted temperature management, amiodarone, and the vasopressin–steroids–epinephrine combination in cardiac arrest, tranexamic acid in trauma (including head injury), and early antibiotics in sepsis/septic shock. Furthermore, the use of bundles of physiologically and pharmacologically sound interventions, such as those recommended in the context of guidelines for sepsis/septic shock, ARDS and postcardiac arrest care, may have also contributed to the observed improvements in outcomes over the past decades.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 pandemic has prompted urgent and intensified research on the development of effective treatments such as the messenger RNA-based vaccines, immunomodulating interventions and antiviral pills. Additionally, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation still constitutes a potentially promising intervention for selected patients with treatment-refractory respiratory and/or circulatory failure. Notably, the rapid evolution of evidence-based ethical guidelines and the introduction of palliative care options seem to increasingly augment the consistency between actually administered treatments and patient/family values, goals and preferences.

This Special Issue invites submissions of reviews and original articles related to any of the aforementioned topics related to ICM.

Prof. Dr. Spyros D. Mentzelopoulos
Guest Editor

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