It is appropriate for patients who have had major surgery and for those with single-organ failure.
Many of these units were set up in the 1990s when hospitals found that a proportion of patients was requiring a level of care that could not be delivered in a normal ward setting.
[1] In 2000 the UK Department of Health issued the Comprehensive Critical Care report, which set out the number of high dependency ("level 2") beds a hospital should have to deliver care appropriately.
By this time, two thirds of UK hospitals had beds identified as "high dependency".
[2] If positive airway pressure ventilation is used to treat respiratory failure, this may be administered in a high dependency unit or equivalent area.