Alfred Intensive Care Unit

Artificial Hearts

Our Intensive Care Unit has pioneered the ICU management of patients needing mechanical heart support in Australia and since 1999 we have successfully managed 236 patients with a long term survival rate approaching 70% which is significantly above the international average survival rate.

Bronchoscopy

Bronchoscopy has important diagnostic and therapeutic roles in the critically ill. 

Burns

The Victorian Adult Burns Service (VABS) at The Alfred hospital is the state-wide provider of burns care for all adults with complex major burn injuries in Victoria, as well as many people with less severe burns. Each year we admit over 300 burns patients and review over 1000 outpatients, with about 35-50 requiring ICU.

Echocardiography

The Alfred ICU has a strong echocardiography focus. We believe that echocardiography has increasingly important in modern intensive care practice. Led by Dr Andrew Hilton the intensivists with an interest in echocardiography include Lisen Hockings, Tim Leong, Deirdre Murphy, Steve Philpot, Owen Roodenburg, Alvin Teo, Sandy Zalstein.

ECMO

The Alfred Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has provided ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) care since 1990 and has performed over 220 cases of ECMO for severe forms of cardiac and respiratory failure. An ECMO Clinical Service was established in 2003 to improve ECMO delivery and beside care.

Heart & Lung Transplantation

Hyperbaric

The Alfred provides Victoria’s State Service for Hyperbaric Medicine, using a large, triple compartment rectangular hyperbaric chamber facility located immediately adjacent the intensive care unit.

Infection Control

The Alfred ICU caters to a range of infections and infectious complications.

Mechanical Ventilation

The Alfred ICU has been active in mechanical ventilation research for over 25 years with particular expertise in mechanical ventilation of patients with severe airflow obstruction, patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome and patients with severe respiratory failure that may require lung recruitment, nitric oxide, high frequency oscillation, veno-venous ECMO, lung transplantation or independent lung ventilation.

Nutrition

The provision of optimal nutrition to critically ill patients is regarded as a key component of intensive care management. The Department of Intensive Care has had a substantial interest in nutrition over many years and has therefore had a long track record of collaboration with the Department of Nutrition to optimise nutrition therapy.

Organ Donation

The Alfred ICU supports organ donation and has an active program for donation after brain death and donation after cardiac death.

Resuscitation Training

In 2010 developments at the Alfred ICU enhanced our approach to teaching and training technical and non-technical resuscitation skills

Special Haematology

The Clinical Haematology service offers a multi-disciplinary setting for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of the entire range of haematological disease.

Trauma

Alfred Trauma ICU is one of 3 intensive care "pods" within the Alfred ICU. There are 15 physical bed spaces dedicated to Trauma ICU patients, with additional capacity to manage trauma patients in other pods when needed.