Investigation of the Factors Affecting Prolonged Intensive Care Unit

Objective: As a result of advanced mechanical ventilation and hemodynamic support applications, the duration of intensive care stay is prolonged. Investigation of effective causes of prolonged ICU stay is important in terms of effective use of intensive care units. Materials and Methods: Patients who were hospitalized for more than 24 hours in the ICU during one year were included into the study. Age, gender, Body Mass index, hospitalization, location (emergency, operating room, service), presence of operation, presence of emergency / elective operation, need for vasopressor, Glaskow coma score (GCS), Full Outline of Unresponsiveness score (FOUR), Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation score, simplified acute physiology (SAPS III) score, hemogram profile, biochemical profile and coagulation profile values were recorded. All patients were classified as stay in the intensive care unit for shorter than 14 days and 14 days and more. We tried to investigate factors affecting prolonged admission by comparing these values. Results: Advanced age, high urea value, low GCS, low FOUR score, high SAPS III value, need for MV and need for vasoactive agent were found to be effective factors in prolonged intensive care hospitalization. Conclusion: We think that extensive studies should be done in this area as more effective use of intensive care units may be possible as a result of trying to reveal the factors affecting prolonged intensive care.