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. Indiana has 209 practicing critical care medicine doctors. Broken out by city, critical care medicine doctor density in Anderson is 5, in Auburn is 1, in Avon is 13, in Bedford is 1, in Beech Grove is 3, in Bloomington is 6, in Brazil is 1, in Burlington is 3, in Carmel is 18, in Chesterton is 1, in Clinton is 1, in Columbia City is 1, in Columbus is 1, in Connersville is 2, in Crawfordsville is 1, in Crown Point is 1, in Danville is 4, in Decatur is 2, in Elkhart is 2, in Elwood is 1, in Evansville is 15, in Fishers is 1, in Fort Wayne is 9, in Franklin is 5, in Gary is 4, in Goshen is 2, in Greencastle is 3, in Greenfield is 2, in Greenwood is 8, in Hammond is 3, in Harrodsburg is 1, in Highland is 1, in Hobart is 3, in Huntingburg is 1, in Indianapolis is 97, in Jasper is 1, in Jeffersonville is 3, in Kokomo is 6, in La Porte is 4, in Lafayette is 10, in Lapel is 1, in Lebanon is 1, in Logansport is 1, in Marion is 1, in Martinsville is 3, in Merrillville is 6, in Michigan City is 3, in Mishawaka is 2, in Mooresville is 1, in Muncie is 5, in Munster is 6, in New Albany is 2, in New Castle is 2, in Newburgh is 3, in Noblesville is 4, in North Vernon is 1, in Princeton is 2, in Richmond is 2, in Saint John is 1, in Scottsburg is 1, in Seymour is 2, in Shelbyville is 5, in South Bend is 6, in Sullivan is 1, in Tell City is 1, in Terre Haute is 6, in Valparaiso is 2, in Warsaw is 1, in Williamsport is 1, and in Winchester is 1.

Indiana’s population is 6,271,973, and most of the state’s population is located in the north, near the Lake Michigan shoreline, and is part of the greater metro Chicago area. Indiana became a state in 1816, and boasts many historical sites and covered bridges, numerous state parks and forests, hunting and fishing, and a variety of golf courses. Centrally located Indianapolis is home to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, hosting the world-famous 500-mile auto race every year. This capital and largest city of Indiana also hosts a Civil War museum, a planetarium, and the Indiana Historical Society, among many other attractions.

According to 2005 Census estimates, Indiana has a population of 6,271,973. Of this population, 1,566,280 are under the age of 18 and 774,303 are at or above the age of 65.