Ñamendys-Silva SA, Plata-Menchaca EP, Rivero-Sigarroa E, Herrera-Gómez A. Opening the doors of the intensive care unit to cancer patients: A current perspective. World J Crit Care Med 2015; 4(3): 159-162 [PMID: 26261768 DOI: 10.5492/wjccm.v4.i3.159]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, MD, MSc, FCCP, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, México. Av. San Fernando No. 22, Col. Sección XVI, Delegación Tlalpan, México City 14080, Mexico. snamendys@incan.edu.mx
Research Domain of This Article
Critical Care Medicine
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Crit Care Med. Aug 4, 2015; 4(3): 159-162 Published online Aug 4, 2015. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v4.i3.159
Opening the doors of the intensive care unit to cancer patients: A current perspective
Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, Erika P Plata-Menchaca, Eduardo Rivero-Sigarroa, Angel Herrera-Gómez
Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, Erika P Plata-Menchaca, Eduardo Rivero-Sigarroa, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, México City 14000, Mexico
Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, Angel Herrera-Gómez, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, México City 14080, Mexico
Author contributions: Ñamendys-Silva SA designed research, analyzed and wrote the paper; Plata-Menchaca EP contributed new reagents or analytic tools and wrote the paper; Rivero-Sigarroa E and Herrera-Gómez A analyzed the data; all authors read and approved the final paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have commercial association or financial involvement that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, MD, MSc, FCCP, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, México. Av. San Fernando No. 22, Col. Sección XVI, Delegación Tlalpan, México City 14080, Mexico. snamendys@incan.edu.mx
Telephone: +52-55-47471020 Fax: +52-55-734664
Received: March 23, 2015 Peer-review started: March 25, 2015 First decision: June 3, 2015 Revised: June 12, 2015 Accepted: July 16, 2015 Article in press: July 17, 2015 Published online: August 4, 2015
Abstract
The introduction of new treatments for cancer and advances in the intensive care of critically ill cancer patients has improved the prognosis and survival. In recent years, the classical intensive care unit (ICU) admission comorbidity criteria used for this group of patients have been discouraged since the risk factors for death that have been studied, mainly the number and severity of organic failures, allow us to understand the determinants of the prognosis inside the ICU. However, the availability of intensive care resources is dissimilar by country, and these differences are known to alter the indications for admission to critical care setting. Three to five days of ICU management is warranted before making a final decision (ICU trial) to consider keep down intensive management of critically ill cancer patients. Nowadays, taking into account only the diagnosis of cancer to consider ICU admission of patients who need full-supporting management is no longer justified.
Core tip: The number and severity of organ failures are still the most important determinants for in-hospital mortality of critically ill cancer patients. Thus, an early intensive care unit admission is crucial to impact in the short-term prognosis of this population.
