Admissions and outcome in a newly established pediatric intensive care unit in a university hospital in Upper Egypt

ABSTRACT

Pediatric intensive care unit [PICU] allows continuous monitoring and offer intensive therapy for infants and children with severe and sometimes life threatening diseases. Our PICU was established in January 2006 and is located within the pediatric department. To study the admission and outcome of our PICU in the first 18 months of establishment. This is an observational retrospective study of admission and outcome of patients admitted to our PICU in the period from 1/2/2006 to 3 1/7/2007. The total number of admissions was 506 patients, their median age was 13 months [interquartile range = 4-88], their median duration of admission was 4 days [interquartile range = 2-144] and the total death rate was 45.5%. Common reasons for admission were Central Nervous System [CNS] problems [129 eases = 25.5%], severe pneumonia [113 cases = 22.3%], scpticemia [98 cases = 19.4%], heart problems [66 cases = 13.0%], severe gastroenteritis [54 cases = 10.7%] and accidents [29 eases = 5.7%]. The relatively high death rate is very alarming hut expected as we only admit patients who are severely ill or those who deteriorate despite treatment in our pediatric department. Despite this our PICU served many patients that were previously been referred to Assiut or Cairo PICUs. Based on the results of this study many changes in management protocols are currently being prepared to improve performance and hopefully decrease the death rate