Common Complications in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Background: Surgical and trauma intensive care units provide the facilities, resources, and personnel needed to care for patients who have been severely injured, present with acute surgical emergencies, require prolonged and complex elective surgical procedures, or have severe underlying medical conditions. Correcting the immediately evident physiologic derangement is only the first step in the care of these patients, because in many cases their prognosis and ultimate outcome will depend on whether additional insults occurred during their intensive care unit and hospital stay, which will prevent them from a full recovery. Aim of the Study: The aim of this work is to find out the common complications that occur in ICU postoperatively and how to decrease their incidence and management. Actually moreover, iatrogenic complications are common and associated with increased morbidity and mortality rates. Human errors accounted for the majority of them, often associated with high nursing workload. The elderly and the severely ill patients are at greater risk of presenting a major complication. To increase safety, preventive measures should be taken. Better organization of the daily workload, better training of the medical and nursing staff as well as avoidance of invasive monitoring, wherever this is possible, could contribute to decrease iatrogenic complications.