Acute cardiac care & resuscitation
Modern Cardiac ICU Care Delivery and the Role of the Cardiac ICU Cardiologist: Submitted on Behalf of the American College of Cardiology's Critical Care Cardiology Council and the Society of Critical Care Cardiology
Authors' conclusion
This study provides insight into the current landscape of cardiac critical care delivery in North America, highlighting wide variation in staffing models, subspecialty training, and clinical practice. Our findings highlight growing trends toward high-intensity staffing models that incorporate critical care medicine-boarded physicians in consultative, comanagement, and or primary roles.
Study context
- Population
- U.S. and Canadian cardiac intensive care unit (CICU)-focused cardiologistsfinal sample after excluding trainees and those not board-certified or board-eligible in cardiology, survey distributed to 1,085, response rate 20%
- Participants
- 166 participants
- Outcome
- Practice setting
Methodological details42-item survey
- 42-item survey
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Medium medical centers
34%
Large medical centers
64%
Academic medical centers
81%
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Care model
- Working in high-intensity care models
- 53%
- CICU dedicated exclusively to medical cardiology patients
- 61%
Roles of critical care medicine-boarded physicians
- Consultative
- 53%
- Comanagement
- 29%
- Primary roles
- 44%
Subspecialization beyond cardiology
- Any subspecialization beyond cardiology
- 82%
- Critical care medicine
- 46%
- Echocardiography
- 37%
- Advanced heart failure
- 21%
- Interventional cardiology
- 16%
Survey conduct
- Distributed by email to U.S. and Canadian CICU cardiologists
- 1,085
- Response rate
- 20%
- Limitations include the low survey response rate, which raises the risk of selection bias.
Original publication
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it