The goals of the Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine (ECCM) are three folds; 1) Provision of evidence-based, high-quality care/treatments for emergency and critically-ill patients; 2) Education for medical students, residents and medical staffs; 3) Research on emergency medicine and critical care medicine.

1) Provision of evidence-based, high-quality care/treatments;
The Advanced Emergency and Critical Care Center admits approximately 1,300 critically ill patients annually. The ECCM provides initial treatments and critical care for critically-ill patients. Cutting edge technologies available for critically-ill patients include innovative cardiorespiratory and neurological monitoring, advanced respiratory care including extracorporeal cardio-pulmonary support for severe respiratory failure, and comprehensive therapy for sepsis and multiple organ failure. All treatment should be evidence-based, highest quality in this country, cost-effective and sustainable. We also provide prehospital care during transportation by ambulance or doctor helicopter. Hiroshima University Hospital is designated as base hospital of Doctor-Heli program, and base hospital for disaster medicine. We also provide special medical support for reconstruction of medical care in Fukushima disaster area.

2) Education;
The ECCM is an independent department within both the medical school and hospital. This allows us to offer a dynamic training program for medical students, residents and medical staffs who have the optimum potential for education. Hiroshima University is designated as official training institute for certified emergency physicians or intensive care physicians Approved by the Residency Review Committee of the Japanese Society for Acute Medicine, and the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Our research focuses on sepsis, respiratory care and infectious disease. Current research topics of the ECCM are as follows;

• Immunomodulation in sepsis
• Effect of temperature on leukocyte proliferation
• Emergency airway management using video-laryngoscopes
• Extracorporeal Membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment for severe respiratory failure
• Lung protection in ARDS
• Innovative respiratory sound monitoring
• Antimicrobial Management for sepsis or bacteremia
• Epidemiological analysis of prehospital cardiac arrest
• DPC-based analysis on critical care
• Telemedicine using high resolution image transmission systems
• Drone application in medicine

Accepting approximately 1,300 critically ill patients annually for emergency and intensive care admission. Main diagnosis are:

• Sepsis and septic shock
• Acute hypoxemic respiratory failures including ARDS or acute exacerbation of interstitial pneumonia
• Severe multiple trauma
• Pediatric critically-ill patients including respiratory failure or multiorgan failures
• Cardiogenic shock including acute coronary syndrome, acute aortic disease, and life-threatening arrhythmia.
• Multiple organ failures occurring in surgical and medical patients
• Toxic patients

We also provide acute care in the emergency room and prehospital care outside of the hospital (including disaster medicine). We are operating rapid-response system inside the hospital, taking part in respiratory support team, nutritional support team and pain, agitation delirium team in the hospital.