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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

So currently, we are working with a client who has their 80-year old father in intensive care.

Now about a year ago, her father was fit, healthy, was still working as a plumber. And now over the last year, he had a couple of strokes. He had a heart attack that ended him up in ICU in the last few weeks.

And now that he had a heart attack, he ended up in the cath lab with coronary stent. And even after they had the coronary stent, he had another heart attack. He ended up in ICU on a ventilator with inotropes, vasopressors. He ended up with sepsis. He ended up with kidney failure.

And now he’s in intensive care with what the intensive care team is describing as multi-organ failure. They say the heart is too weak to keep the kidneys and the liver perfused. And the lungs are failing, which is why he’s on ventilation.

And the ICU team is having the “doom and gloom” talk with the family and saying that it’s “in the best interest” of their father to let him die, because he won’t have any quality of life in the future. I should say he won’t have any perceived quality of life in the future. And the family’s asking us, is this an accurate prediction? What should they be doing next?

Now here’s my answer to this, 90% of intensive care patients survive. That’s only one out of 10 dying, approximately. And those are worldwide statistics from research.

Do people recover after multi organ failure? Yes, they do. Absolutely. I’ve seen it many times. Do people die with multi organ failure? Yes, absolutely. But the majority actually survives.

So the question is, do you want to give up? I argue, let’s continue. Let’s help your dad wake up and let him make his own decision. Does he want a tracheostomy to continue his life if he can’t be weaned off the ventilator? And then he can make up his own mind whether he wants to go on or not. It’s not the ICU team’s decision to make decisions about life or death. It’s the ICU team’s duty to help families and patients to get what they want. And that’s the bottom line.

And we can help you with all of that. We can help you with the advocacy, with the consulting. We can show you how ICUs operate. We can help you saying the right things. We can say the right things on your behalf. We can hold the intensive care team accountable. That’s part of what we do on a day by day basis. We can review medical records, give you a second opinion.

That is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com to our website, call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or send us an email to [email protected].

Also check out our membership for families of critically ill patients at intensivecaresupport.org, become a member there.

Like this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates for families of critically ill patients in intensive care, leave your comments below, let me know what you want to see next, or what questions or insights you have from this video and click the notification bell.

Take care for now.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.