Children aged 0-16 admitted to Swedish intensive care units and paediatric intensive care units showed low mortality rates

Association Between Centralization and Outcome for Children Admitted to Intensive Care in Australia and New Zealand: A Population-Based Cohort Study

OBJECTIVES

To describe regional differences and change over time in the degree of centralization of pediatric intensive care in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and to compare the characteristics and ICU mortality of children admitted to specialist PICUs and general ICUs (GICUs).

DESIGN

A retrospective cohort study using registry data for two epochs of ICU admissions, 2003-2005 and 2016-2018.

SETTING

Population-based study in ANZ.

PATIENTS

A total of 43,256 admissions of children aged younger than 16 years admitted to an ICU in ANZ were included. Infants aged younger than 28 days without cardiac conditions were excluded.

INTERVENTIONS

None.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

The primary outcome was risk-adjusted ICU mortality. Logistic regression was used to investigate the association of mortality with the exposure to ICU type, epoch, and their interaction. Compared with children admitted to GICUs, children admitted to PICUs were younger (median 25 vs 47 mo; p < 0.01) and stayed longer in ICU (median 1.6 vs 1.0 d; p < 0.01). For the study overall, 93% of admissions in Australia were to PICUs whereas in New Zealand only 63% of admissions were to PICUs. The adjusted odds of death in epoch 2 relative to epoch 1 decreased (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.50; 95% CI, 0.42-0.59). There was an interaction between unit type and epoch with increased odds of death associated with care in a GICU in epoch 2 (AOR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.05-2.53 for all admissions; 1.73, CI, 1.002-3.00 for high-risk admissions).

CONCLUSIONS

Risk-adjusted mortality of children admitted to specialist PICUs decreased over a study period of 14 years; however, a similar association between time and outcome was not observed in high-risk children admitted to GICUs. The results support the continued use of a centralized model of delivering intensive care for critically ill children.

Emergency department admissions to the intensive care unit - a national retrospective study

Background

Emergency departments (EDs) see a rising number of patients, but only a small fraction of ED patients need immediate intensive care. The characteristics of these patients are mostly unknown and there is reason to believe that there are large inter-hospital differences in thresholds for intensive care admissions from the ED. The purpose of this study was to give a nationwide overview of ED admissions directly to intensive care units.

Methods

We used the Swedish Intensive care Registry to identify all patients admitted to intensive care from the ED (January 1, 2013 until June 7, 2018). The primary outcome was discharge diagnosis after intensive care (primary ICU diagnosis code). ICU mortality and” ICU admission due to only observation” were analyzed as secondary outcomes.

Results

110,072 ICU admissions were included, representing 94,546 unique patients. Intoxication, trauma and neurological conditions were the most common causes for intensive care, but large variations according to age, sex and hospital type were seen. Intoxication was the most prevalent diagnosis in young adults (46.8% of admissions in 18–29 years old), whereas infectious diseases predominated in the elderly (17.0% in 65–79 years old). Overall, ICU mortality was 7.2%, but varied substantially with age, sex, type of hospital and medical condition. Cardiac conditions had the highest mortality rates, reaching 32.9%. The mortality was higher in academic centers compared to rural hospitals (9.3% vs 5.0%). It was more common to be admitted to ICU for only observation in rural hospitals than in academic centers (20.1% vs 7.8%). Being admitted to ICU only for observation was most common in patients with intoxication (30.6%).

Conclusions

Overall, intoxication was the most common cause for ICU admission from the ED. However, causes of ED ICU admissions differ substantially according to age, sex and hospital type. Being admitted to the ICU only for observation was most common in intoxicated patients.

Trial registration

Not applicable (no interventions).

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12873-021-00517-0.