Temple’s critical care team provides care for patients with a wide variety of conditions, including:

• Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS)
• Heart failure: a condition where the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs, that can cause low blood pressure, which can lead to fluid buildup in the lungs, fluid buildup in the feet and legs, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
• Hypoxia or hypercapnia: hypoxia is a term that refers to lower-than-normal concentrations of oxygen in the blood and organs. Hypercapnia is a buildup of carbon dioxide (the gas that we are supposed to breathe out) in the bloodstream, usually as a result of poor breathing.
• Pneumonia
• Pulmonary embolism
• Sepsis: a serious illness that results when the body has an overwhelming immune response to a bacterial infection.
• Shock: a life-threatening condition where the body does not have sufficient blood flow. Shock can be caused by heart problems, infections, allergic reactions, low blood volume or damage to the nervous system.
• Stroke: an interruption in blood flow to the brain, caused either by a clot in the blood vessels supplying the brain or by a hemorrhage.
• Respiratory failure

The type of treatment critical care patients receive depends on their individual needs. The critical care team works together to evaluate patients and provide care. At the Temple Lung Center, we treat advanced respiratory failure that sometimes cannot be handled in other intensive care units.

Some of the unique treatments offered include:

• Prone bed: involves a rotating bed that can put patients in prone position (body lying face down), which has been proven to improve outcomes if it’s used early on in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). 
• ECMO: extracorporeal membrane oxygenation involves inserting tubes, called cannulas, into blood vessels near the heart and pumping blood out of the body through an artificial lung, and then back into the body. The artificial lung performs the function of normal lungs in the body, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. Also, if needed, this machine can provide help to the heart to keep the blood pressure on an adequate level.
• Lung transplant:  We are a high volume lung transplant center and some of our ICU patients with respiratory failure get evaluated for lung transplant.