Essentials of An Intensive Respiratory Care Unit: Report of the Subcommittee and Committee on Emphysema American College of Chest Physicians

Abstract

Recent experience has indicated that an intensive care unit designed and staffed to manage the many problems resulting in acute respiratory failure is highly effective in salvaging patients who otherwise would have died. The problem of acute respiratory failure encompasses a wide clinical spectrum of such magnitude that most community hospitals today are challenged to provide appropriate services. The most commonly encountered precipitating causes of acute respiratory failure are acute respiratory infections in patients with chronic obstructive lung disease, chest trauma, postoperative respiratory insufficiency, accidental or self-induced poisonings, reversible neurologic emergencies and hypoxemic states due to severe pneumonitis and the adult respiratory distress syndrome with its many causes. The overall problem is growing because of the increasing incidence of chronic obstructive lung disease, the increasing recognition of respiratory failure in nonobstructive states, the increasing use of surgery in older persons, as well as the alarming incidence of poisonings in our younger population.