Critically ill patients with high predicted mortality: Incidence and outcome

Objective: As calculated by the severity scores, an unknown number of patients are admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with a very high risk of death. Clinical studies have poorly addressed this population, and their prognosis is largely unknown. Design: Post hoc analysis of a multicenter, cohort, longitudinal, observational, retrospective study (CIMbA). Setting: Sixteen Portuguese multipurpose ICUs. Patients: Patients with a Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II) predicted hospital mortality above 80% on admission to the ICU (high -risk group); A comparison with the remaining patients was obtained. Interventions: None. Main Variables of Interest: Hospital, 30 days, 1 year mortality. Results: We identified 4546 patients (59.9% male), 12.2% of the whole population. Their SAPS II predicted hospital mortality was 89.0 +/- 5.8%, whilst the observed mortality was lower, 61.0%. This group had higher mortality, both during the first 30 days (aHR 3.52 [95% CI 3.34-3.71]) and from day 31 to day 365 after ICU admission (aHR 1.14 [95%CI 1.04-1.26]), respectively. However, their hospital standardized mortality ratio was similar to the other patients (0.69 vs. 0.69, P = .92). At one year of follow-up, 30% of patients in the high-risk group were alive. Conclusions: Roughly 12% of patients admitted to the ICU for more than 24 h had a SAPS II score predicted mortality above 80%. Their hospital standardized mortality was similar to the less severe population and 30% were alive after one year of follow-up. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Espan similar to a, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).