About 185 local and international experts gathered here Tuesday for a major three-day conference on critical care organized by the Saudi Critical Care Society (SCCS). The event was inaugurated by Major General Dr. Ketab Bin Eid Al-Otaibi, Director General of the General Administration for Medical Services at the Armed Forces. Addressing the inaugural session, Colonel Dr. Yasser Mandoura, head of the conference's Organizing Committee said that intensive care or critical care medicine is concerned with the provision of life support or organ support systems for patients who are critically ill and usually require constant monitoring. Critical care is usually only offered to those whose condition can possibly be reversed and who have a good chance of surviving with intensive care support, he added. He said the provision of intensive care is generally administrated in a specialized unit of a hospital called the intensive care unit (ICU) or critical care unit (CCU). Many hospitals also have designated intensive care areas for certain specialties of medicine, including coronary, surgical and pediatrics. He said this branch of medicine is relatively new. In the past it was not clear that specialized intensive care units were needed, so resources were brought to the room of the patient who needed additional monitoring and care. He said it became rapidly evident, though, that a fixed location where intensive care resources and personnel were available, provided better care than ad hoc provision of intensive care services spread throughout a hospital. He said that over the past three years the SCCS has trained about 6,000 medical personnel in all branches of intensive care, including 450 doctors in all specialties of critical care medicine. An additional 25 doctors from Sudan were also given training.
