Organ Responses and Organ Support

Severe burn injury is a massive physiologic insult to the human body. The trauma to tissue caused by large burns results in an intense immune-inflammatory and hypermetabolic response that can be greater than other forms of severe critical illness and trauma. Critical care is a process of frequent physiologic monitoring coupled with procedural or pharmacologic interventions done in real time to address the patient’s current clinical status. This chapter details the organ-specific responses to the physiologic stress of burn injury and what is currently being done in burn intensive care units to support organs that are injured or failing as a consequence of the systemic response to burn injury. This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply, 2020.