November 29th

After the ICU, More Patients Face a Second Recovery: In hospitals, doctors have created more sophisticated treatment for sick patients in ICU. When patients go to the hospital, they get the treatment that they need, but after they come home, they have to go back to the hospital again, but for symptoms of something that doctors call post-intensive care syndrome. This illness is now becoming more common in ICU patients. While in ICU at a hospital, a patient may be constantly attached to ventilation systems, heavily sedated, or there may be medicine constantly circulating throughout their blood system, from an IV. Although all of these forms of treatment help a patient survive, they also may cause a temporary brain injury doctors call "ICU delirium." ICU delirium is basically just a cognitive or brain dysfunction that occurs for up to 80% of the survivors of ICU. These cognitive and brain dysfunctions include post-traumatic stress, depression, muscle weakness, and more. Now doctors are realizing that ICU patients most likely need treatment similar to the treatment used for recovery from heart attacks and strokes, so that the patient does not end up with a permanent impairment. Now, the ICU Program has been created in Vanderbilt, where ICU patients go through a 12-week rehabilitation program, so that instead of going home, and being a couch potato due to the inability to move, the patient goes home, feeling better, and being able to move around independently. Although it make take a while, each step in recovery from ICU treatment is important.