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Challenges for Critical Care Medicine

Janet M. Torpy, MD

JAMA. 2002;287:1513-1515.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Las Vegas—Familiar pathogens, septic shock, emerging infectious diseases, and bioweapons, the old and new nemeses of critical care physicians, occupied center stage at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Medicine's 40th Anniversary Symposium on Critical Care, Trauma and Emergency Medicine. Threats to patients worldwide, these issues are increasingly prevalent in the acute care arena, affecting healthy people and the burgeoning aging and immunocompromised population alike.

Dennis Maki, MD, Ovid Meyer Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, put the issue in perspective: "Far more patients die of infectious diseases than of heart disease and cancer combined. Infections are the fourth leading cause of mortality in the United States—and the likelihood of contracting foodborne enteritis has exploded in the last 20 years."

EMERGING PATHOGENS

Antibiotic overuse plays a large role in current disorders, said Maki, spawning conditions such as pseudomembranous . . . [Full Text of this Article]