Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

What Is the Cardiovascular ICU?

The Cardiovascular ICU is an intensive care unit dedicated to patients with heart and blood vessel disease. Patients are watched more closely than on a regular ward. Heart rhythm, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and other organ functions are monitored continuously, so changes can be recognized and treated promptly.

Who Is Cared for Here

• Patients after heart surgery, such as coronary bypass, valve surgery, or aortic surgery
• Patients with a heart attack, especially after a procedure to open a blocked coronary artery
• Patients with severe heart failure or cardiogenic shock, a condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to the body
• Patients with dangerous heart rhythm problems
• Patients who need monitoring after a complex catheter procedure or after being resuscitated from cardiac arrest

If you have severe chest pain or severe shortness of breath, go to the emergency department right away. From there, doctors will decide whether you need ICU care.

Equipment and Team

Each bed has a vital signs monitor. Depending on need, patients may use a breathing machine (ventilator), infusion pumps that deliver heart medicines in precise doses, a line that measures blood pressure directly in an artery, and a temporary pacemaker. The care team includes cardiologists, among them doctors with expertise in cardiovascular intensive care, ICU nurses, and surgeons for patients after surgery. Clinical nutrition and rehabilitation medicine doctors help maintain the patient's nutrition and mobility.

What Patients and Families Can Expect

Patients in the ICU often have several tubes and wires attached, and monitors may sound alarms; these sounds are part of monitoring and do not always mean danger. After surgery, patients usually still have a breathing tube until they are awake and able to breathe on their own. Some patients, especially older adults, may experience temporary confusion called delirium. Nurses help you sit up, take deep breaths, and move again step by step.

Families receive explanations from the doctor about the patient's condition and care plan. Visiting rules and items that may be brought in can be checked with the ICU staff.

When Patients Leave the ICU

Patients move to a regular ward when their vital signs are stable, they no longer need a breathing machine or heart-support medicines by infusion, and the doctor judges that close monitoring is no longer needed. The length of ICU stay differs for each patient, depending on the illness and the course of recovery.