The service takes care of serious medical patients with one or more organ failures requiring specific, most often invasive, and life-threatening care.

However, it is common for surgical patients to also be taken care of in the service because of a surgical diagnosis made secondarily or in the absence of space in the surgical intensive care units of the anesthesia-resuscitation department or in local hospitals. . These acute failures are: respiratory distress, circulatory failure, renal failure, drug poisoning, severe infections, neurological failure and coma, or severe immunocompromised patients ( leukemia, aplasia, allograft, chemotherapy) …

• teamwork: involving doctors, paramedics, physiotherapists, psychologists, etc.
• a medical diagnostic approach : requiring active collaboration with other organ-specific specialties and CHU laboratories, as well as imaging specific to intensive care (ultrasound, scanner, MRI , isotopy)
• and a therapeutic approach that may require the implementation of artificial techniques for the replacement of deficient vital organs:
  In addition to conventional medical care, invasive and non-invasive ventilation, cardiac monitoring, cardiac catheterizations are thus carried out in the department , continuous or discontinuous extra renal purification (dialysis), external respiratory assistance (ECMO and ECCO2R) and external circulatory assistance (ECLS). In addition, two specific rooms with sterile isolation ensure the care of immunocompromised patients (chemotherapy, leukemia, allograft marrow, solid cancer, AIDS, etc.) and requiring resuscitation.