Imaging of the critically ill patient

For reasons of cost-effectiveness, time savings, and, most importantly, patient safety, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures are being performed more frequently in the intensive care unit (ICU) at the patient's bedside. This development is not surprising, because the transport of patients to other areas of the hospital, the road trip, may be associated with risks that should not be undertaken without a judicious assessment of the risk:benefit ratio of the test. Some of the adverse events that have occurred during these transports include delays in the administration of medication, equipment malfunction, malposition of the patient's endotracheal tube, and cardiopulmonary arrest.1,2 Although the implementation of a specially trained ICU transport team has been shown to reduce these complications, there is a trend to avoid the risks altogether by doing as much imaging in the ICU as possible.1,3,4 To that end, the following includes a discussion of the most commonly performed imaging procedures in the intensive care environment.