Avoidable Hospitalization Causes in Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Intensive Care Units (ICU) attend high risk patients and thus the assistance of a specialized team is required. High patient demand and restrictions in financial resources have brought about a decrease in beds and an increase on the waiting list. Current analysis deals with the profile of patients admitted to ICUs in a hospital in Maringá PR Brazil, and identifies the main admission causes and evaluates whether they could be avoided. The quantitative study on 123 charts of patients admitted to ICU between July 21012 and March 2013 show that 59% were males, average age 57.5 years), with highest prevalence within the 58 – 73 age bracket (32%), and the main causes were neurological (31%) and traumatic (19%). Encephalic vascular incidents were the most salient among the neurological cases, whereas the most predominant among the traumatic causes were caused by car accidents, respectively with 45% and 71%. Mean permanence time in ICU was 16.2 days and death rate reached 27%. Knowledge on the causes of patients in ICUs demonstrates to the medical community and to managers that ICU beds were occupied with avoidable causes which may be minimized and even avoided through people´s conscious-raising.