Critical Care & Respiratory Care

The Critical Care and Respiratory Care department was organized in 1997 to develop a unified, multidisciplinary approach to critical care in our 52-bed, state-of-the-art, Intensive Care Unit. 

Critically ill medical and surgical patients are managed by a multidisciplinary team of board certified intensivists trained in the fields of anesthesiology, pulmonary medicine and surgery, critical care fellows, anesthesiology house staff, mid level providers, critical care nurses, respiratory care practitioners, pharmacists, nutritionists, physical therapists, ethicists, social workers and members of the clergy. Our team works side by side with the primary oncology teams to treat the life threatening complications that sometimes arise during a cancer patient’s treatment.

Respiratory Care

Respiratory care is an integral part of the Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine division. We provide a full spectrum of inpatient and outpatient respiratory care to all ages every day of the week, 24 hours a day. The practice of respiratory care encompasses activities in diagnostic evaluation, therapy, and patient/family education. Our team provides therapeutic care that support life on mechanical ventilation, bronchoscopies, airway management, medication administration, lung protection therapies, oxygen therapy, and blood gas laboratory testing. Respiratory care practitioners participate in physician and interdisciplinary team rounds at bedside daily and achieve an autonomy to practice respiratory care through established protocols. The department has implemented quality and performance improvement tools to promote patient safety and share accountability for quality patient care outcomes.

The highly skilled Respiratory Care team consists of respiratory care practitioners licensed by The Texas Medical Board and board certified by the National Board of Respiratory Care as registered respiratory therapists and advanced critical care specialists. The Respiratory Care group provides an opportunity to earn career growth as a senior respiratory therapist. Respiratory Care is supported by respiratory therapists, senior respiratory therapists, educators, supervisors, manager, director, medical director, and chair of the Critical Care & Respiratory Care department. 

Research

The department's research mission is to facilitate oncology studies at MD Anderson. Research in the department typically involves identifying problems from clinical observational studies and quality improvement initiatives, and then testing potential solutions in both animal models and clinical trials. These efforts include

• Describing patterns of medical and surgical critical illness specific to the cancer population and predicting outcome in the ICU.
• Finding new ways to predict those patients at greatest risk of treatment toxicity.
• Developing techniques for organ function preservation to allow patients to tolerate increasingly toxic cancer treatments.
• Providing expert physiological measurements to collaborators as they measure the efficacy of their own novel treatments.

Please see the Critical Care and Respiratory Care research page for more information.