What can be done about PICS? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Physical and mental health issues can follow a stay in an intensive care unit, a condition known as PICS, for post intensive care syndrome. Rohan Mathur, a critical care expert at Johns Hopkins, says now that more attention is being focused on PICS, strategies to intervene and ideally to reduce PICS incidence or prevent it are being developed.

Mathur: Identifying PICS is a newer trend in the medical literature and in what science is trying to do that's really important. We have started to be able to identify whether things that we do in the ICU can be done better in a way to limit these impacts in the long term. We don't want them to have these consequences so being able to understand who develops this and then being able to trace that back to identifying what kind of interventions can help mitigate this or decrease the odds of someone getting this we need to study that more.   :31

Mathur says things like sedation, pain relief and early mobility are being scrutinized in efforts to reduce the burden of PICS. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.