Critical care medicine deals with life support or organ support for patients who are critically ill. A critical care physician diagnoses, treats, and supports patients who may be in an intensive care unit, or who may have multiple organ dysfunction. Patients who receive intensive care treatment are usually critically ill patients who are treated after major surgery and require intensive monitoring. The critical care or intensive care physician may also communicate with the patient’s primary physician, other specialists, and the critical care staff to coordinate treatment and care.

Physicians in this specialty treat patients suffering from numerous diseases and illnesses, but some of the most common are trauma, cystic fibrosis, renal failure, liver failure, post-operative care, serious infections, acute lung injury, hemodynamic instability, hypoxic injury, reversible heart & lung dysfunction, multi-organ dysfunction, airway & respiratory compromise, cardiopulmonary failure, and circulatory failure.

Once properly diagnosed, practitioners can perform numerous procedures on patients including endotracheal tube, mechanical ventilation, tracheotomy, ecmo (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), establishing central venous access, adial arterial catheterization, and passage of pulmonary arterial balloon flotation catheters.

To diagnose patients with possible illnesses and diseases, specialists will often perform one of many tests including magnetic resonance imaging (mri), computed axial tomography (ct or cat scan), blood test, and pulmonary function tests (pfts).

Doctor density varies by specialty and location. The United States has 10,619 practicing critical care medicine doctors. Broken out by state, critical care medicine doctor density in Alabama is 122, in Alaska is 10, in Arizona is 171, in Arkansas is 47, in California is 1,068, in Colorado is 188, in Connecticut is 197, in Delaware is 36, in District of Columbia is 84, in Florida is 632, in Georgia is 239, in Hawaii is 47, in Idaho is 25, in Illinois is 485, in Indiana is 213, in Iowa is 114, in Kansas is 80, in Kentucky is 99, in Louisiana is 154, in Maine is 72, in Maryland is 399, in Massachusetts is 419, in Michigan is 326, in Minnesota is 216, in Mississippi is 71, in Missouri is 311, in Montana is 23, in Nebraska is 50, in Nevada is 64, in New Hampshire is 62, in New Jersey is 372, in New Mexico is 63, in New York is 993, in North Carolina is 258, in North Dakota is 41, in Ohio is 442, in Oklahoma is 76, in Oregon is 122, in Pennsylvania is 664, in Rhode Island is 66, in South Carolina is 114, in South Dakota is 17, in Tennessee is 233, in Texas is 592, in Utah is 56, in Vermont is 22, in Virginia is 228, in Washington is 229, in West Virginia is 61, in Wisconsin is 212, and in Wyoming is 4.