Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

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

So one of our readers, Corey wants to know how likely is it for someone in intensive care to survive if they’re on mechanical ventilation and dialysis.

Now that’s a great question to ask Corey, but it’s also a very general question. You might’ve heard me say before that the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know because if somebody needs mechanical ventilation and dialysis in intensive care, there could be a multitude of reasons that would be too long to go into this video. You know, there are so many admission scenarios for somebody to go into intensive care.

But, just touching on the most common scenarios would be heart failure, pneumonia, even after significant trauma. Sepsis is definitely one of the big ones, ARDS or lung failure. Also when patients are on ECMO for heart failure or for lung failure. So those are the most common scenarios when somebody is in intensive care on ventilation with dialysis.

How likely is it for someone to survive? Well, that’s a good question. The mortality rate in ICU is around 10% so that means 90% of patients are surviving, which is the odds are really in your loved one’s favor and you should always keep that in mind because we know from experience and you know that probably by now as well, that intensive care teams are always negative and always focused on the doom and gloom. Whereas in reality, 90% of the patients survive their stay in intensive care.

So you should yourself, ask the question, why can’t your loved one not be in the 90% and most likely they can be and they are in the 90%. So, therefore the overwhelming majority of patients on ventilation and dialysis do survive intensive care. Also, dialysis in intensive care is often for acute renal failure, which means renal failure or kidney failure is often reversible, which means the dialysis is often temporary.

It also depends on issues such as how long is a patient in an induced coma. Are they on other mechanisms of life support such as inotropes or vasopressors? Do they have other organs failing, such as the heart, liver, brain, and so forth.

So it really depends on a number of issues if someone can survive or not. But the most important thing in a situation like that is that you start asking the right questions because again, this is a very good question, but it’s also a very broad question. And when somebody is in intensive care on a ventilator and on dialysis, there’s 30, 40, sometimes 50 things happening simultaneously that are all important and that you need to know and understand. And that’s where our help comes in where we can help you to understand those things, break down things in detail, talk to the doctors with you so you can understand what’s really happening.

So that’s my tip for today. This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com.

If you need help, go and check out intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or send me the email to [email protected]. Also like this video, comment down below what questions you have and like my YouTube channel. Take care.