Animal Hospitalization
Intensive care medicine is a medical specialty dedicated to providing life support or organ system support to critically ill patients, who generally also require intensive supervision and monitoring.
Patients requiring intensive care usually also require support for hemodynamic instability (hypotension or hypertension), airway or respiratory compromise, or renal failure, and often all three.
Intensive medicine usually uses a system-by-system treatment approach, more typical of high-dependency treatments. The nine key organ systems are considered one by one on an observation-intervention-impression basis to produce a daily plan. In addition to the nine key systems, intensive care treatment also includes other areas of intervention such as pressure points, mobilization and physiotherapy, and secondary infections.
The nine key systems in intensive care medicine are: the cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, the endocrine system, the gastrointestinal tract (and nutritional condition), hematology, microbiology (including the septic state), the peripheries (and the skin), renal (and metabolic), respiratory system.
The Montjuïc Veterinary Hospital has facilities with state-of-the-art technology for the care and treatment of critically ill patients, which includes mechanical ventilation devices to assist breathing through an endotracheal tube or a tracheostomy; advanced cardiovascular monitoring equipment; intravenous lines for pharmacological infusions or total parenteral nutrition, nasogastric tubes, suction pumps, drains and catheters; and a wide range of drugs including vasoactive drugs, sedatives, broad-spectrum antibiotics and analgesics.
Our specialists in Intensive Medicine, in collaboration with other specialists at the Center and veterinary assistants, assist patients with life-threatening failure of one or more organs, which includes stabilization after serious surgical interventions. It involves continuous management (24 hours) that includes monitoring, diagnosis, support of compromised vital functions and treatment of underlying diseases.