Integrating palliative care into the modern cardiac intensive care unit: a review

The modern cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) specializes in the care of a broad range of critically ill patients with both cardiac and non-cardiac serious illnesses. Despite advances, most conditions that necessitate CICU admission such as cardiogenic shock, continue to have a high burden of morbidity and mortality. The CICU often serves as the final destination for patients with end-stage disease, with one study reporting that one in five patients in the USA die in an intensive care unit (ICU) or shortly after an ICU admission. Palliative care is a broad subspecialty of medicine with an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on optimizing patient and family quality of life (QoL), decision-making, and experience. Palliative care has been shown to improve the QoL and symptom burden in patients at various stages of illness, however, the integration of palliative care in the CICU has not been well-studied. In this review, we outline the fundamental principles of high-quality palliative care in the ICU, focused on timeliness, goal-concordant decision-making, and family-centred care. We differentiate between primary palliative care, which is delivered by the primary CICU team, and secondary palliative care, which is provided by the consulting palliative care team, and delineate their responsibilities and domains. We propose clinical triggers that might spur serious illness communication and reappraisal of patient preferences. More research is needed to test different models that integrate palliative care in the modern CICU.