Matthew A. Wanat, PharmD

The 2018 Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Annual Congress was recently held in San Antonio, TX, with over 6,000 critical care practitioners from around the world who presented research, attended educational sessions and used the opportunity to network.

The meeting began with its first Save a Life Public Health Event, sponsored by SCCM and the city of San Antonio. Attendees from all over city were taught how to provide layperson cardiopulmonary resuscitation, stop the bleed and apply a tourniquet, safely dispose opioid medications, and properly use car seats.

Among the groundbreaking research and discussion at the meeting were topics on the effectiveness of high-dose Vitamin C in sepsis, use of balanced crystalloids vs. saline for resuscitation and effect of burnout among many ICU disciplines.

SCCM President Jerry Zimmerman, MD

SCCM President Jerry Zimmerman, MD, discussed how sometimes “less is more” when taking care of patients, referring to avoiding unneeded diagnostics, transfusions, sedation and other medications or treatments that are not without negative side effects.

Another topic that was highly talked about was the newly available medication, Angiotensin II, and its place in therapy. Angiotensin II showed an improvement in obtaining target mean arterial pressure in the ATHOS-3 trial but was not associated with a reduction in mortality.

Furthermore, social media participation grew tremendously since the previous SCCM meetings. A total of 19,765 tweets were made with the hashtag #CCC47 – which were seen or interacted with over 76 million times – and more than 43 percent of attendees participated on Twitter in some fashion. Search #CCC47 on Twitter to catch up on presentations and discussions from the hottest topics at the meeting.

This article was authored by Matthew A. Wanat, PharmD, clinical assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy in Houston, TX.