title: Intensive care unit models: Do you want them to be open or closed? A critical review.
abstract: Intensive care is a specialized branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis, management, and follow up of critically ill or critically injured patients. It requires input from other branches of medicine on various issues. A critical care specialist has expertise in managing such patients round the clock. Based on his freedom to take decisions in the intensive care unit (ICU), different types of ICUs - open, closed, or semi-closed - have been defined. There is no doubt that all critical patients should be evaluated by an intensivist. Therefore, it is argued that a closed ICU model would be the ideal model. However, this may not always be feasible and other models may be more useful in resource-limited countries. In this review, we compare the different formats of ICU functioning and their suitability in different hospitals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, GB Pant Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, New Delhi, India.
authors.forename: Debashish
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chowdhury
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, GB Pant Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, New Delhi, India.
authors.forename: Ashish K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Duggal
mesh_terms: D003422:Critical Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards