Intensive Care Unit

The Intensive Care Unit consists of an 11 bedded critical care area and a 22 bedded recovery room/step down unit. The unit has 24 hour coverage by a consultant and junior medical staff. Several consultants of the department rotate in the ICU on a monthly basis, many of whom have received specialisation training in intensive care at various centers abroad. The unit aims at providing high quality intensive care for the critically ill cancer patients.

Patients include critically ill surgical patients, patients with acute medical illness, co-orbid conditions and patients with hematological malignancies, neutropenia and chemotherapy related complications. These patients have complex problems like Sepsis, ARDS, and multi-organ failure, many having acute haemodynamic, respiratory and metabolic derangements.

On an average the ICU receives over 650 critically ill patients every year with a mean APACHE II Score of 15.The mortality is about 35% with an SMR (Standardised Mortality Ratio) of 1.4 (2005 figures)

The unit is equipped with well trained intensivists and state of the art amenities to provide the entire range of intensive care services including airway management, mechanical ventilation, circulatory support including advanced haemodynamic monitoring, renal support with dialysis or hemofiltration, enteral /parenteral nutrition, blood component therapy, sedation, pain relief and other supportive measures.

Emphasis is given to the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to critical care The unit has a team of specialised nurses, physiotherapists, dieticians, technical and paramedical staff who are actively involved in the supportive care of the patients. The ICU also takes consults from various services as and when required.

The ICU has several quality assurance programmes and ongoing audits. Severity scoring of patients is done using APACHE II, SAP II, Groegar and SOFA scores and entered into a database. On going collection and analysis of microbiology culture data is used to identify ICU infection patterns. Various protocols and audits including one for airway accidents and outcome of patients with haematological malignancies have been implemented to evaluate and improve the quality of care in the ICU.

The ICU runs a Cardiac Arrest Team that was started in the hospital in December 2002. The team is actively involved in the resuscitation of all in hospital cardiac arrests. Systematic reporting of all cardiac arrests, crash cart inspections and on going training of hospital medical and paramedical staff are other activities of the ICU team.

ISCCM Post Graduate Diploma in Critical Care Medicine

The ICU is a  recognised  training  unit  for the ISCCM Diploma  in Critical Care Medicine
( One Year Course) for a period of Six months. Two seats are available in the months of february and August each year. Applications for the post should be addressed to the Head of Department and sent in by the first week of January and July respectively.

Details about the ISCCM Diploma course are available on the following website

http://www.isccm.org/ISCCM/Certificatecourse.aspx

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