Comparative study on the prognosis of critical ill patients transferred from another island compared to those patients transferred from emergency department to intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVE: To compare outcomes of critically ill patients transferred from another island compared to those patients with direct admission from Emergency Department to intensive care unit (ICU). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Retrospective study of prospectively collected data during 8 years. The population studied was all critical adult patients transferred from another island to our hospital and those directly admitted from the Emergency Department. Variables were age, sex, clinical diagnosis (coronary, medical, surgical, or trauma), acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) II score at admission, ICU days of stay, days of mechanical ventilation and ICU mortality. RESULTS: During the period of study, 3,115 patients coming from Emergency Department (Group 1) were admitted to our ICU and 138 were transferred from another island (Group 2). No significant statistically differences were found between both groups neither age, sex, APACHE II, ICU days, days of mechanical ventilation, and mortality rate (17.5% versus 20.3%, P = 0.43). The multivariate analysis showed that age, APACHE II score, ICU days of stay, type of patient, and days of mechanical ventilation were independent variables associated with mortality. CONCLUSIONS: No differences were found in the global prognosis of the admitted patients transferred from another island compared to those who were admitted directly from the Emergency Department. There is no impact on mortality in transferring a patient in our study population.

Differences in the prognosis among severe trauma and medical patients requiring mechanical ventilation.

Objetive. To find the differences between the prognosis of the patients with severe traumatism injury and those who were admitted with medical pathology who also required mechanical ventilation in our ICU. Patients and Method. Retrospective descriptive study in a polyvalent ICU of a third level hospital for a period of 8 years. Epidemiological variables such as age, sex, average stay, mortality, APACHE II at admission and days of mechanical ventilation, were analyzed in patients with severe traumatism injury and patients with medical pathology that were admitted in ICU and received mechanical ventilation during this period. Results. During the study period were admitted 208 patients with severe traumatism injury and 732 medical patients, all of them required mechanical ventilation. Patients with severe traumatism injury are more younger (41.8 vs 55.3 years, p = 0.001) and entered ICU in a state of minor severity, according to the prognostic index APACHE II (14.8 vs 17.4, p < 0.001), despite which they required more days of mechanical ventilation (9.8 vs 7.8 days, p = 0.017) and had a higher average stay (11.4 vs 9.4 days, p = 0.027), although the mortality was significantly lower (38.2% vs 28.2%, p = 0.005). Multivariate analysis showed as independent variables associated with mortality, the APACHE II (p < 0.0001), the average stay in ICU (p < 0.0001), days of mechanical ventilation (p < 0.0001) and type patient (p = 0.016). Conclusions. Patients with severe traumatic injury that require mechanical ventilation despite to be admitted in ICU in a state of greater severity, having an increased ICU stay and more days of mechanical ventilation, have a better prognosis than medical patients that required also mechanical ventilation at ICU stay, likely to be younger.