Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Nursing

Author: Zhu Yimin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The development of medicine and the changes of the times have made critical care medicine an independent specialized discipline. Monitoring involves continuous observation and management of patients, including monitoring physiological functions, life support equipment, guiding management, and enhancing treatment. The basic purpose of critical care is to assess the function of vital organs and changes in acute disease processes, determine whether intubation and mechanical ventilation are necessary, track the effects of medications, and evaluate the patient's nutritional and metabolic status. Critical care is an important part of critical care medicine. During World War II, shock management and the rescue of poliomyelitis with respiratory paralysis and respiratory failure in Denmark in the 1950s were two typical examples of centralized treatment and critical care. It was not until the 1960s that critical care was gradually accepted globally. In the United States, critical care for heart disease patients was developed first, with the establishment of special units and training of resuscitation personnel. According to a 1964 report from the U.S. Public Health Service, 1,000 national hospitals had cardiac monitoring units (CCU) for acute myocardial infarction, saving 25,000 patients' lives each year. In 1970, the American Society of Critical Care Medicine was formally established, and by 1971, the number of CCUs exceeded 2,000. By 1982, there were 5,600 CCUs, with a total of 55,000 critical care (ICU) beds, accounting for 5% of the total hospital beds in the United States.
In the past 20 years, the rapid development of emergency medicine, the introduction of new critical care technologies and monitoring methods into clinical practice, and their application in many diseases and fields have significantly improved the outcomes and prognosis of critical care. China's emergency medicine started relatively late. In the 1960s, 654-2 was used to treat toxic shock and explosive meningitis. Starting in the 1980s, ICU units were established, emergency departments were strengthened, the Chinese Society of Emergency Medicine was founded, and the number of ICUs and professional personnel continued to increase. Monitoring and rescue conditions were continuously improved, pre-hospital emergency care was carried out, and the emergency medical system was perfected. Pediatric diseases are characterized by rapid onset, severe progression, high mortality, and high case fatality rates. In the mid-1980s, a batch of pediatric intensive care units (PICU) were established domestically, and subsequently, large and medium-sized cities, especially children's hospitals, established PICUs and NICUs of various scales, reducing the mortality rate of critically ill children and promoting the development of pediatric medicine.