Life-Threatening Clinical Situations in The Cardiac Intensive Care Unit

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the most important leading causes of death worldwide. In recent years, in order to prevent these deaths, cardiovascular intensive care units for the patients with severe cardiovascular disease, have been developed in many hospitals. Dedicated medical staff has been trained to manage these life-threatening clinical situations, such as coronary artery diseases, cardiomyopathies, myocarditis, cardiac arrhythmias, conduction disorders, valvular heart disease, aortic dissection or acute pulmonary thromboembolism. These patients often complain of heart failure and cardiogenic shock and, therefore, need continuous monitoring and cardiac intensive care. Early recognition and immediate treatment of these life-threatening clinical situations is essential to improve the prognosis of patients.

Unfortunately, in the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the conversion of many cardiac intensive care units into COVID-19 departments. This has brought a number of unfavorable consequences for patients with severe heart disease. Thus, during the first semester of 2020, it has been observed a decrease of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease and a concomitant increase of complications and mortality for these patients.

Patients with severe cardiovascular disease represent a population with persistently high in-hospital mortality, and the risk grows with increase in time since the onset of the event. Therefore, a proper and immediate therapeutic management is very important in order to increase patient survival.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together contributions from international researchers in the area of life-threatening clinical situations from the cardiac intensive care units. Original Research, Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Short Communications, Perspectives, Case Report articles are welcomed, in order to share our knowledge about the latest approaches to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of patients with critical cardiac illness, even in this new context of COVID-19 pandemic.