Translational Critical Care Medicine: Integrating State-of-the-Art Knowledge between Bench and Bedside.

Abstract

With rapid development in the past few decades, critical care medicine and the intensive care unit (ICU) have become irreplaceable parts of the healthcare system. It is a multidisciplinary system that provides specialized and intensive medical care, advanced monitoring, organ function maintenance, and life support for critically ill patients. During the Crimean War in 1854, Florence Nightingale and a team of nurses provided intensive nursing care for critically injured soldiers, and her model of care was considered the precursor of contemporary ICUs. The first ICU was established in Denmark in 1953 when polio became epidemic and patients were centralized in a discrete department and mechanical ventilation was used to support the victims. Since then, critical care medicine continued embracing fast-developing technologies for organ maintenance and life support such as electrocardiogram monitoring, invasive mechanical ventilation, hemodialysis, bedside ultrasound, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Nowadays, critical care medicine has become an integral element of the healthcare systems worldwide and has been evolved into a distinct medical subspecialty. To continue the advancement of critical care medicine, physicians and scientists must not only focus on developing novel medical technologies but also integrate knowledge from clinical and basic science research to further our treatment of critically ill patients.