Attention has heightened over the last several years to the importance of managing pain, agitation, and delirium in mechanically ventilated patients due to the multiple long‐term adverse effects patients experience after an intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Furthermore, clinical practice is being molded not just by the guidelines and randomized controlled trials, but also by the information gathered from real patient experiences to improve care at the bedside. The literature continues to remain sparse for providing guidance specifically in the oncology population. Therefore, several resources have been combined to better assist clinicians on making sound decisions for keeping patients comfortable on the ventilator while recognizing the differences in treatment that may need to be employed due to these patients’ medical condition.
Part of the book: Oncology Critical Care
Critical care in the oncology population consists of diverse levels of diseases, syndromes, and emergencies that are not observed in typical medically-ill patients and, with it, comes even more specialized treatment strategies. Therefore, the uncommon or less well-understood pharmacologic considerations in this population must be discussed to better assist any clinician at the bedside. This chapter outlines some of the situations commonly encountered in this setting such as the challenge of treating and preventing infectious diseases when the patient lacks the ability to mount appropriate immune responses to conventional therapy, the paradigm of treating thromboembolism in the group of patients who are at highest risk for both bleeding and clotting and treatment of acute and long-term consequences of cancer or chemotherapy requiring escalation of care to the intensive care unit (ICU).
Part of the book: Oncology Critical Care