COVID 19 - Concerns for the Intensive Care Physician- A Review

Quick Response Code Abstract: COVID-19 is most well-known for causing respiratory pathology. It can also result in other organ involvement. These include thrombotic complications like myocardial infarction and stroke. Cardiac arrhythmias, acute kidney injury, gastrointestinal symptoms, hepatocellular injury, pancreatitis, neurologic disorders including demyelination, endocrine issues like hyperglycemia and ketosis have been reported. Individually and in combination, these can add to mortality and morbidity. This review is primarily focussing on the potential life threatening problems that physicians can encounter during the course of COVID 19 patients‘ stay in intensive care unit. Electronic literature search was done to study COVD-19 and its pathophysiology, different organ involvement other than lungs, ICU management and mortality. The search engines used to conduct the electronic literature searches were PubMed, PubMed Central, Google Scholar and CAS. A combination of keywords was used to make the searches such as COVID-19 AND (Pathology OR Pathophysiology OR Complications OR Organ failure OR Intensive care OR Risk factors OR Mortality).The articles published in English language between the years 2019 and 2020 were considered in the review. Few cross references of previous years were also reviewed and included. The findings of these studies were synthesized into a narrative review.