Intensive Care
Suncity Hospitals, Intensive or critical care units (ICUs) are specialist hospital wards that provide intensive treatment and monitoring for people during a critically ill or unstable condition.
There are many various conditions and situations which will cause organ system failure like a heavy accident – a road accident or a severe head injury; a heavy acute health condition – like a coronary failure (where the provision of blood to the center is suddenly blocked), or a stroke (where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted); a heavy infection – like a severe case of pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs) or sepsis (blood poisoning) or surgical procedure – this will either be a planned admission to an ICU as a part of your recovery after surgery or an emergency measure if there are complications during surgery.
Treatments & Procedures:
Our critical care centre provide patients constant medical attention and support to stay their body functioning with the assistance of our high degree of medical expertise, constant access to highly trained nurses and specialised monitoring equipment. We undertake medical aid for nervous disorders, heart conditions still neonatal and pediatric complications.
Our critical and intensive care units offer a large number of treatments that cannot be given on normal wards. To keep a very close eye on their progress, most patients are connected to several different types of monitor, which continuously measure important aspects of the patient’s well-being such as blood pressure, fluid levels and heart rate. We also provide continuous invasive monitoring, sometimes pressure recorders are put into the head to measure pressure inside the head in patients with head injuries or after surgery; drainage tubes may be put into the bladder and tubes into the stomach, usually through the nose.
The majority of critically ill patients require at least some help with their breathing, and this is provided by a machine called a ventilator. The ventilator blows fresh air and oxygen into the patient’s lungs, and then lets it out again, in exactly the same way as would occur naturally.
Some patients will need their breathing to be supported for several days or more. We recommend that these patients can benefit from having the tube in their mouth or nose changed to a shorter tube that is placed directly into the windpipe through the front of the neck. This is known as a tracheostomy which makes it easier to keep a patient’s lungs clean and is more comfortable for patients than having a tube in the mouth or nose. Therefore, patients can need less of the drugs that make them sleepy, which is better for their health in the medium to long term.
We also offer circulation support when the blood pressure is low using fluid replacement and drugs that increase blood pressure.
Our intensive care nurses use a central line catheter placed in a large vein of the body to give multiple medications and draw blood quickly while arterial line catheter is placed in an artery to measure constant blood pressure and to draw blood. Vasoactive drugs may be prescribed by our intensive care doctors to support heart function including increasing or decreasing blood pressure.
Nutrition is often administered through the IV or through a tube placed into the nose or mouth and passed down to the stomach