Methods “Papageorgiou” General Hospital is one of the four major hospitals of Thessaloniki, the second largest Greek city of 1.2 million inhabitants. Data was extracted from hospital databases (ICD-10 diagnoses V01-V89 for MT and X60-X84 for SA) from the year 2008 to 2014. Several variables concerning patient demographics, APACHE and SAPS II scores, length of ICU stay (LOS) and outcome were rec...

BACKGROUND Our aim was to assess the contribution of training in data definitions and data extraction guidelines to improving quality of data for use in intensive care scoring systems such as the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II and Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II in the Dutch National Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE) registry. METHODS Before and after at...

BACKGROUND The Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) IV model has not yet been validated in Korea. The aim of this study was to compare the ability of the APACHE IV with those of APACHE II, Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) 3, and Korean SAPS 3 in predicting hospital mortality in a surgical intensive care unit (SICU) population. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed ele...

Early and accurate differentiation between infectious and non-infectious fever is vitally important in the intensive care unit (ICU). In the present study, patients admitted to the medical ICU were screened daily from August 2008 to February 2009. Within 24 hr after the development of fever (>38.3℃), serum was collected for the measurement of the procalcitonin (PCT) and high mobility group B 1 ...

BACKGROUND Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are aging, and older age has been associated with higher mortality in ICU. As previous studies have reported that older age was also associated with less intensive treatment, we investigated the relationship between age, treatment intensity and mortality in medical ICU patients. METHODS Data were extracted from the administrative database of 18 me...

OBJECTIVES Cirrhosis represents a serious risk in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Several preoperative factors identify cirrhotic patients as high risk for cardiac surgery; however, a patient's preoperative status may be modified by surgical intervention and, as yet, no independent postoperative mortality risk factors have been identified in this setting. The objective of this study was to...

BACKGROUND About one third of hospital mortality in critically ill patients occurs after Intensive Care Unit (ICU) discharge. Some authors have recently hypothesized that unresolved or latent inflammation and sepsis may be an important factor that contributes to death following successful discharge from the ICU. AIM The aim of our study was to determine the ability of the clinical and inflamm...

BACKGROUND B-type natriuretic peptide is a hormone secreted by the heart in response to ventricular wall stress. Increased B-type natriuretic peptide plasma levels are also found as a consequence of noncardiac conditions including sepsis, surgery-induced systemic inflammatory response syndrome and kidney failure. Since these conditions are common in general intensive care unit patients, we hypo...