Trauma Critical Care Medicine

The faculty in Trauma Critical Care is an interdisciplinary team of experts in the management of critically ill and injured patients. Available 24 hours a day, these intensivists offer consultation and referral services to community physicians requiring support in the management of patients with conditions such as adult respiratory distress syndrome, necrotizing fasciitis, sepsis, and multiple organ failure.

Patients who require a high level of monitoring and intervention either after trauma or during critical illness can benefit from Shock Trauma's critical care resources. The critical care faculty has immediate access to a wide array of sophisticated diagnostic and therapeutic equipment. Patient care areas are staffed by nurses with specialized training in critical care.

The complex nature of critical care often requires consultations with other clinical specialists such as infectious disease practitioners, pulmonologists, psychiatrists, and hyperbaricists. The intensivists coordinate subspecialty consultations and then implement integrated patient care plans in Shock Trauma's Multitrauma Critical Care (MTCC) and Neurotrauma Critical Care Critical Care (NTCC) units.

A clinical innovation that is being studied by the faculty in Trauma Critical Care is simplified extracorporeal lung assist (ECLA). ECLA minimizes the need for traditional ventilatory support (and its potential complications), using low blood flow, small vascular catheters, and relatively small extracorporeal blood volume. This system employs membrane oxygenation technology and shows great promise as a support for some patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome.

Specialists at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center are available for consultation and patient referral 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ambulatory patients are evaluated in Shock Trauma's Outpatient Clinic on a scheduled basis.

Call University OneCall/Maryland ExpressCare at 1-800-373-4111 for easy access and no-hassle service.