An episode of critical illness is transformative. Patients suffer important new nerve, brain, and muscle injury. The spectrum of morbidity varies according to individual risks, but prevalent disabilities transcend diagnostic groupings. In the context of intensive care unit-acquired weakness (ICUAW), each patient who enters the ICU will begin to degrade muscle through upregulation of different proteolytic pathways, and, although the inciting stimulus, or its magnitude, may differ somewhat across patients, the result is the same. This argues for an approach to rehabilitation that is etiologically neutral and based on an understanding of molecular pathophysiology that can be mapped to functional outcome and tailored to individual need.
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