Abstract
The prognosis of critically ill patients is affected by the policy of ICU. In our hospital, the department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine was established on January 1, 2004, and since then full-time intensivists have decided the whole treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate if the change of ICU policy affected the prognosis of the critically ill patients. We enrolled 2,989 patients who admitted to ICU from 2001 to 2006. We compared their prognosis between 3 years before (F group) and after the change of ICU policy (L group). ICU mortality decreased from 13.2% in F group to 6.1% in L group. Length of ICU stay also decreased from 7.4±16.1 day (F group) to 5.6±9.7 day (L group). These findings were the case in the subgroup of the patients who needed mechanical ventilation for longer than 48 hours: the mortality decreased from 23.4% (F group) to 12.8% (L group), and the length of ICU stay decreased from 23.0±35.4 day (F group) to 16.3±18.5 day (L group), respectively. These results suggest that the management by intensivists improved the prognosis.
