Bone Failure in Critical Illness

Bone Failure in Critical Illness
Critical Care Medicine: December 2016 - Volume 44 - Issue 12 - p 2270–2274
Lee, P

Objectives: The origin of systemic inflammatory response syndrome and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome is poorly understood but remains a fundamental concern in the ICU. 
This paper provides a critical appraisal on whether bone failure may represent an unrecognized component of systemic inflammatory response syndrome/multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. 
Data Sources, Data Selection, and Data Extraction: Search of the PubMed database and manual review of selected articles investigating bone pathophysiology in critical illness. 
Data Synthesis: Bone hyperresorption is highly prevalent among critically ill patients. Bone breakdown releases numerous systemically active cytokines and bone-sequestered toxins, with the capacity to fuel inflammatory hypercytokinaemia and metabolic toxaemia. Anti-resorptive medication inhibits bone break down and preadmission anti-resorptive use is associated with superior survival among critically ill patients. 
Conclusions: We propose that hyperresorptive bone failure is an unrecognised component of systemic inflammatory response syndrome/multiple organ dysfunction syndrome that is causal to critical illness progression. If this hypothesis is valid, bone preservative strategies could reduce the risk of osteoporosis/fractures among ICU survivors, as well as decreasing critical illness mortality.