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

So currently we’re working with a client who has their 80-year old dad in ICU for the last four weeks. Initially, my client’s dad went into ICU after a significant brain bleed. He ended up in ICU with an intracranial pressure monitor (ICP). The intracranial pressures were high initially, but came down eventually after a few days.

He had a follow-up CT scan that showed the swelling was going down, that the bleed was being absorbed and that the midline shift that was caused by the bleed is going down. Then he ended up with a tracheostomy because he initially couldn’t come off the ventilator.

Then he came off the ventilator, went to the stepdown unit/high dependency unit and he was still off the ventilator, but wasn’t still waking up. And then eventually returned back into ICU with pneumonia, had to be put back on the ventilator, ended up with IV antibiotics and so forth. He had atelectasis in his chest x-ray and was quite sick again.

So that’s where he’s up to at the moment. He’s back in ICU on a ventilator, not waking up, antibiotics are on, the pneumonia is slowly clearing up. The atelectasis is slowly disappearing and it looks like he can come off the ventilator maybe as early as tomorrow or the day after.

So my client is very impatient saying, how could this happen? Is the ICU team at fault? Have they rushed him off the ventilator too quickly? And he’s looking more or less where the fault lies.

Now, yes, the reality when someone is in ICU and is in a situation like that, the challenge is that it’s often two steps forward and one step back in intensive care. When someone is critically ill, it’s very unpredictable, especially after the brain bleeds.

The brain is doing their own thing. The only organ that you can’t control is the brain. You can control the heart. You can control the lungs. You can control the liver. You can control the kidneys, at least for a period of time. You can’t control the brain.

And if someone is not waking up and he’s not getting mobilized, there is a very high chance they end up with a pneumonia. And that is exactly what happened. The ICU team has not been mobilizing my client’s father, which is a big problem.

When someone is in ICU and is bed-bound, immobile, they’re at higher risk of getting a pneumonia. And that’s why I keep coming back, people need to get mobilized no matter whether they’re awake or not awake, if they’re not awake, they need to be stimulated.

Mobilization is part of the stimulation and they need to get out of bed in a recliner chair, into a tilt chair. Any mobilization, any movement is better than being in bed all day, diminishes the risk of pressure sores. It increases blood flow. Imagine you’re lying in bed for weeks on end. You wouldn’t be waking up either. It’s just normal physics, really?

But, it’s often two steps forward, one step back in intensive care. You’ve got to be patient. It’s very unpredictable. You also got to keep remembering, 90% of patients in ICU survive. So why would my client’s dad not survive? Why should he be part of the 10% that don’t survive? So always stay optimistic. As long as there’s life there is hope and two steps forward, one step back, that is the bottom line.

That is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go and check out intensivecarehotline.com where you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands of case studies now for families in intensive care. If you have a loved one in  intensive care, call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, intensivecarehotline.com or on the numbers below this video on YouTube.

Like this video, comment below what you want to see next and subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates for families in intensive care.

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