What is a Coronary Care Unit (CCU)?
Coronary Care Unit( CCU) is an intensive care unit to follow critical patients with heart diseases who require close monitorization of vital signs and rhythms. Patients after heart attack, with diagnosis of heart failure and respiratory distress, life threatening arrhythmias, severe valvular diseases with pulmonary congestion, pulmonary edema and respiratory distress, and patients with high risk coronary intervention are followed in the coronary care unit. In this unit, the nurses are educated to recognise and manage life threatening arrhythmias, sudden cardiac arrest and acute pulmonary edema.
What equipment is needed in a CCU?
CCU should be equipped with medical equipment which can be used to monitor and also to manage critical heart disease patients. The major equipments are:
Monitors to follow vitals like blood pressure, heart rate, heart rhythm, respiratory rate
Mechanical Ventilation to support patients with acute respiratory failure
ECMO to support acute circulatory failure
Echocardiography
Arterial Blood Gas measurement device
Portable x-ray machine
Equipments for arterial blood pressure monetization
Equipments to treat hypoxemia( oxygen source, noninvasive ventilation support, high flow oxygen support)
Which patients are treated in the CCU?
Following are the diseases and medical conditions treated in coronary care unit:
Treatment and follow up of coronary artery disease( heart attack and patient who had undergone coronary intervention)
Patients with severe valvular pathologies( stenosis or insufficiencies) and symptoms are treated and prepared for surgery
Patients with severe heart failure decompensation and organ failure Respiratory failure due to heart and pulmonary disease
Infective Endocarditis patients with complications and signs of instability Malign Hypertension
Life threatening arrhythmias
Patients waiting for heart transplant and in need of inotropes to maintain normal cardiac output
Postoperative patients with cardiac complications( arrhythmias, acute coronary syndrome)
Trauma to heart or pulmonary system
Myocarditis