Optimizing Shock Treatments in Personalized Critical Care

Dear Colleagues,

The history of the word "shock" in medicine goes back nearly 300 years, and the definition of the term has changed repeatedly since then. Currently, the accepted doctrine is that shock is a life-threatening condition of circulatory failure, which causes inadequate oxygen delivery to meet cellular metabolic needs and oxygen consumption requirements, and thus ultimately cellular and tissue hypoxia.

Shock is not a single entity but an etiologically heterogeneous clinical syndrome, and is divided into four major (e.g., distributive, hypovolemic, cardiogenic, obstructive, etc.) and diverse (e.g., anaphylactic, septic, etc.) subcategories. Its incidence varies by aetiology, while mortality remains high, with studies frequently reporting fatality rates of 20–50% across all patient populations, despite advances in critical care.

As in many medical specialties, personalized medicine is becoming increasingly important in critical care, and alongside protocol-based acute care, the treatment of our patients is becoming more individualized.

We look forward to receiving numerous submissions from intensivists all around the globe addressing research on this deadly condition.

This Special Issue is designed to familiarize clinicians and researchers with the latest advances surrounding the treatment of shock in critical care from the perspective of personalized medicine.

Original research articles and review papers are welcome in this Special Issue. Research topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel and/or established treatment options of distributive, hypovolemic, cardiogenic, and obstructive shock;
• Optimized fluid and vasopressor management in individuals with shock;
• The individual use of extracorporeal life support (ECLS) resources in patients with shock;
• Antimicrobial therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) trials in septic shock;
• The treatment of shock in older patients;
• Treatment goals and time-limited ICU trials in shocked patients, in whom benefits of critical care are uncertain;
• Inflammatory and acute phase biomarkers as indicators of treatment response in shock.

Dr. Richard Rezar
Dr. Bernhard Wernly
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Personalized Medicine is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• critical care
• critical care outcomes
• shock
• sepsis
• resuscitation
• precision medicine