[Requirements of intensive care medicine for laboratory diagnosis]

The effective utilization of the laboratory diagnostics in the intensive care medicine requires a close co-operation between physician and laboratory diagnostician beginning from discriminated requests and the faultless specimen collection until the computerised evaluation and interpretation. Out of the numerous necessary parameters of investigation special attention is directed to the assessment of the electrolyte and water balance, the transcapillary exchange and the oxygen consumption. In the following years the laboratory diagnostics has to meet important demands which result from pathobiochemical research conclusions with critically ill patients.