Clinical pharmacological and therapeutic considerations in general intensive care. A review.

The application of clinical pharmacological concepts and therapeutic standards in intensive care settings presents particularly difficult problems due to the lack of adequately controlled background information and the highly variable and rapidly evolving clinical conditions where drugs must be administered and their impact evaluated. In this review, an attempt has been made to discuss the available knowledge within the framework of a problem-oriented approach, which appears to provide a more clinically useful insight than a drug-centred review.