Year in Review 2021: Noteworthy Literature in Cardiothoracic Critical Care

This year marked a number of milestones in critical care. As vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus became widely available and were confirmed to be exceptionally effective against severe illness and hospitalization, we were then faced with new variants and the resource-intense responses necessary to combat them. Despite challenges new and old, we have persevered and continued to provide excellent care to our patients while pushing the boundaries of clinical research. This article is a collection of studies published in 2021 relevant to critical care, with a specific focus on cardiothoracic critical care. To ignore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic would do a disservice to our colleagues, many of whom have made incredible breakthroughs in novel therapies to the coronavirus, and yet we present additional themes of delirium, acute kidney injury, lung transplant, advances in ECMO as well as biomarkers of sepsis.