Caring for COVID‐19 patients through a pandemic in the intensive care setting: A narrative review

Since the declaration of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, health systems/health-care-workers globally have been overwhelmed by a vast number of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. During the early stages of the pandemic, the lack of formalized evidence-based guidelines in all aspects of patient management was a significant challenge. Coupled with a lack of effective pharmacotherapies resulted in unsatisfactory outcomes in ICU patients. The anticipated increment in ICU surge capacity was staggering, with almost every ICU worldwide being advised to increase their capacity to allow adequate care provision in response to multiple waves of the pandemic. This increase in surge capacity required advanced planning and reassessments at every stage, taking advantage of experienced gained in combination with emerging evidence. In University Hospital Southampton General Intensive Care Unit (GICU), despite the initial lack of national and international guidance, we enhanced our ICU capacity and developed local guidance on all aspects of care to address the rapid demand from the increasing COVID-19 admissions. The main element of this success was a multidisciplinary team approach intertwined with equipment and infrastructural reorganization. This narrative review provides an insight into the approach adopted by our center to manage patients with COVID-19 critical illness, exploring the initial planning process, including contingency preparations to accommodate (360% capacity increment) and adaptation of our management pathways as more evidence emerged throughout the pandemic to provide the most appropriate levels of care to our patients. We hope our experience will benefit other intensive care units worldwide.