Over the coming years, accelerating progress against cancer will be associated with an increased number of patients who require life-sustaining therapies for infectious or toxic chemotherapy-related events. Major changes include increased number of cancer patients admitted to the ICU with full-code status or for time-limited trials, increased survival and quality of life in ICU survivors, changing prognostic factors, early ICU admission for optimal monitoring, and use of noninvasive diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. In this review, experts in the management of critically ill cancer patients highlight recent changes in the use and the results of intensive care in patients with malignancies. They seek to put forward a standard of care for the management of these patients and highlight important updates that are required to care for them. The research agenda they suggest includes important studies to be conducted in the next few years to increase our understanding of organ dysfunction in this population and to improve our ability to appropriately use life-saving therapies or select new therapeutic approaches that are likely to improve outcomes. This review aims to provide more guidance for the daily management of patients with cancer, in whom outcomes are constantly improving, as is our global ability to fight against what is becoming the leading cause of mortality in industrialized and non-industrialized countries. Introduction Cancer remains a leading cause of death in the general population, and the first cause of death in men and women over 40 years old [1, 2]. Significant medical progress has been achieved by means of more intensive chemotherapy regimens or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), targeted therapies in selected diseases with recurrent tumorigenic mechanisms, or adoptive cell transfer technology. Overall, the cancer death rate has dropped by 23% since the 1990s, translating to millions of deaths averted. The American Association for Cancer Research recently reported that the number of cancer survivors increased from 1 in 69 (1.4%) to 1 in 21 (4.8%) people [1, 2]. Despite this progress, death rates from cancer remain substantial and challenging. In the years to come, accelerating progress against cancer will increasingly require intensive care unit (ICU) support with the use of life-sustaining therapies for infectious or toxic chemotherapy-related events [3]. With rapid development of new drugs, this phenomenon can only proliferate. For instance, the recent use of tocilizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against the interleukin-6 receptor (IL-6R) to reverse cytokine-releasing syndromes in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy associated with vascular leakage respiratory distress and refractory hypotension, has resulted in a greatly increased demand for life support measures over less than a decade Over the past two decades, five major changes have occurred: (1) the number of cancer patients needing ICU care has dramatically increased, with 15% of ICU beds occupied by cancer patients [5, 6]. (2) Survival has improved and is below 30% in the ICU and