AUDIT Cardiac surgery : moving away from intensive care

Accepted for publication 8 April 1992. Abstract Objective-To evaluate outcome in patients managed outside an intensive care unit after open heart surgery. Background-The high cost of cardiac surgery is mainly due to the needs of traditional postoperative care. The requirements for intensive care and treatment has decreased with improvements in techniques of cardiac surgery and anaesthesia. In this setting the need to continue to depend on intensive care units for the recovery of cardiac surgical patients is questionable on clinical and economic grounds. Design-Postoperative outcome in 245 patients over a four month period was studied prospectively. Patients-Mean age of the patients was 63-2 years. They underwent a wide variety of operative procedures. Ninety percent of them recovered in a dedicated three bed cardiac surgical recovery area where the management protocol led to rapid extubation and step down in dependency