Also called: ICU · Intensive care
Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.
About Critical Care
Critical care is medical care for people who have life-threatening injuries and illnesses. It usually takes place in an intensive care unit (ICU). A team of specially-trained health care providers gives you 24-hour care. This includes using machines to constantly monitor your vital signs. It also usually involves giving you specialized treatments.
You need critical care if you have a life-threatening illness or injury, such as:
- Severe burns
- COVID-19
- Heart attack
- Heart failure
- Kidney failure
- People recovering from certain major surgeries
- Respiratory failure
- Sepsis
- Severe bleeding
- Serious infections
- Serious injuries, such as from car crashes, falls, and shootings
- Shock
- Stroke
In a critical care unit, health care providers use lots of different equipment, including:
- Catheters, flexible tubes used to get fluids into the body or to drain fluids from the body
- Dialysis machines ("artificial kidneys") for people with kidney failure
- Feeding tubes, which give you nutritional support
- Intravenous (IV) tubes to give you fluids and medicines
- Machines which check your vital signs and display them on monitors
- Oxygen therapy to give you extra oxygen to breathe in
- Tracheostomy tubes, which are breathing tubes. The tube is placed in a surgically made hole that goes through the front of the neck and into the windpipe.
- Ventilators (breathing machines), which move air in and out of your lungs. This is for people who have respiratory failure.
These machines can help keep you alive, but many of them can also raise your risk of infection.
Sometimes people in a critical care unit are not able to communicate. It's important that you have an advance directive in place. This can help your health care providers and family members make important decisions, including end-of-life decisions, if you are not able to make them.
It sits within Surgery and Rehabilitation.
When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.
Research on Critical Care
1,765 studies areregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.
What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.
Research currently under way
- Brain Blood Flow and Cerebral Autoregulation Monitoring in Critically Ill ChildrenUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison
- Optimizing Dysphagia Treatment Delivery in Acute Care: A Hybrid Efficacy Implementation TrialVanderbilt University Medical Center
- Housing Transitions QUERIVA Office of Research and Development
- Predictive Validity of the Chelsea Critical Care Physical Assessment Tool (CPAx) for Regaining Autonomy Three Months After ICU DischargeCentre Hospitalier Intercommunal Elbeuf-Louviers-Val de Reuil
- Effect of Structured Education for Family Members of Intensive Care Patients Undergoing TracheostomyGiresun University
- Fecal Lactate and Resuscitation Outcomes in Critical IllnessHospital H+ Queretaro
Research already completed
- Dialyzing Wisely - Improving the Delivery of Acute Renal Replacement Therapy to AlbertansUniversity of Alberta
- Generative AI-Assisted Clinical Decision Support for Medical Intensive Care Unit PhysiciansSeoul National University Hospital
- Flexible Bronchoscopy in Resistant Pneumonia in PICUMansour Gomaa Mohammed Saleh
Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.
Where to read more
Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.
Treatments and Therapies
- Arterial CatheterizationAmerican Thoracic Society
- Central Venous CatheterAmerican Thoracic Society
- Chest tube insertion - seriesMedical Encyclopedia
- Chest Tube ThoracostomyAmerican Thoracic Society
- Tracheostomy - series -- Normal anatomyMedical Encyclopedia
- What Is a Ventilator?National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Clinical Trials
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Intensive CareNational Institutes of Health
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Life Support CareNational Institutes of Health
- ClinicalTrials.gov: TracheostomyNational Institutes of Health
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Ventilators, MechanicalNational Institutes of Health
Medical subject headings
Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Critical Care. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.
This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for Critical Care, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.