PURPOSE The objectives of this study were to find factors related to medical intensive care unit (ICU) readmission and to develop a prediction index for determining patients who are likely to be readmitted to medical ICUs. MATERIALS AND METHODS We performed a retrospective cohort study of 343 consecutive patients who were admitted to the medical ICU of a single medical center from January 1, ...

BACKGROUND The admission of patients with malignancies to an intensive care unit (ICU) still remains a matter of substantial controversy. The identification of factors that potentially influence the patient outcome can help ICU professionals make appropriate decisions. PATIENTS AND METHODS 90 adult patients with hematological malignancy (leukemia 47.8%, high-grade lymphoma 50%) admitted to th...

The aim of this study was to obtain insight into which proportion of cancer patients is admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and how their survival, demographic, and clinical characteristics relate to cancer patients not admitted to the ICU. Data from patients registered with cancer between 2006 and 2011 in four hospitals in the Netherlands were linked to the Dutch National Intensive Care E...

INTRODUCTION This study examined the potential effects of time to tracheostomy on mechanical ventilation duration, intensive care unit (ICU), and hospital length of stay (LOS), and ICU and hospital mortality. METHODS Cohort observational study was conducted in a tertiary care medical-surgical ICU based on a prospectively collected ICU database. We included 531 consecutive patients who were ad...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To assess the effect of an intensive glycemia management protocol on the cost of care of a heterogeneous population of critically ill adult patients. DESIGN Economic analysis of a 1,600-patient "before-and-after" study of intensive glycemia management. SETTING Fourteen-bed mixed medical-surgical adult ICU of a university-affiliated community teaching hospital. PATIENTS Ei...

Introduction: Critically ill patients often need blood transfusion, but no reliable predictors of transfusion requirements are available at Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission. We hypothesized that ICU patients admitted with Iron Deficiency (ID) may be at higher risk for developing anemia, requiring blood transfusion. The aims of this study were to determine the frequency of ID in ICU patients ...

Procalcitonin (PCT) has been used to guide treatment in critically ill patients with sepsis, but whether PCT at intensive care unit (ICU) discharge can stratify risks of post-ICU readmission or mortality is unknown. This cohort study compared the ability of PCT with C-reactive protein (CRP) in predicting unexpected adverse post-ICU events. Of the 1877 patients admitted to the multidisciplinary ...

BACKGROUND The association between levels of acute kidney injury (AKI) during ICU admission and long-term mortality are not well defined. METHODS We examined medical records of adult patients admitted to a large tertiary medical center with no history of end-stage renal disease who survived 60 days from ICU admission between 2001 and 2007. Demographic, clinical, physiologic, and date of death...

Over the last 15 years the management of patients admitted in the ICU has changed dramatically. A growing number of well designed randomized controlled studies have been published, resulting in improved medical care and reduction of short-term morbidity and mortality. Despite these important achievements, little attention has been placed on the long-term complications of subjects discharged fr...

Introduction Prolonged stays in ICU generate anxiety for vulnerable patients and family members and are often associated with PTSD. The use of an ICU diary in which families and caregivers write about the milestones of the patient’s stay in the ICU has been proposed as an aid to fill in gaps in patients’ memories. Still, caregivers have not widely adopted the keeping of ICU diaries and provisio...