Intensive care unit

Not only intensive care, but also an intensive experience for those affected and their relatives: As frightening as the machines appear and as disturbing as the constant hustle and bustle is, monitoring and therapy in the intensive care unit are just as vital for the patient’s survival. Here you can find out when a stay in an intensive care unit is necessary, what it looks like on such a ward and what other relatives of intensive care patients should know.

Intensive care unit enables intensive treatment

“He is now in intensive care” – most people who hear such a sentence are  aroused by fears , unpleasant feelings or escape reflexes. Understandable – after all, a stay there is only necessary in a strong (physical) state of emergency and is therefore linked to the threat of death and inevitable illness in our opinion.

But as terrible as the situation there seems to be, it is primarily one thing: the possibility of using intensive monitoring, care and therapy to stabilize and thus improve the potentially life-threatening condition of a sick person. The intensive care unit in the hospital helps to prevent illness and, in the worst case, death.

When is a stay in an intensive care unit necessary?

Admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is indicated when a patient requires particularly intensive monitoring and treatment. Possible reasons are:

• an acute emergency
• have a chronic condition that is acutely worsening (for example, a  pulmonary embolism  or a severe asthma attack)
• an extended injury to after a car accident (polytrauma)
• the first hours to days after an  operation
• certain therapies that can cause serious complications (e.g. breaking up blood clots)

Patients who need ventilation are also cared for in the intensive care unit.

Is there only one intensive care unit?

In smaller hospitals, there is usually an interdisciplinary ward where all intensive care patients lie. In larger or specialist clinics there are often several specific ICUs or at least several functional units in one ward – for example:

• the CCU (Cardiac Care Unit) for patients with acute heart problems
• the Stroke Unit for patients with a  stroke  or
• Intensive care units for surgical patients who receive further care there after an operation

There are also an increasing number of “intermediate care wards” (IMC), which are between the ICUs and normal wards in terms of equipment and intensity of care and in which patients requiring intensive care who are not quite as seriously ill are cared for.