Trends in admission prevalence, illness severity and survival of haematological patients treated in Dutch intensive care units

Contains fulltext : 137126.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)PURPOSE: To explore trends over time in admission prevalence and (risk-adjusted) mortality of critically ill haematological patients and compare these trends to those of several subgroups of patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit (medical ICU patients). METHODS: A total of 1,741 haematological and 60,954 non-haematological patients admitted to the medical ICU were analysed. Trends over time and differences between two subgroups of haematological medical ICU patients and four subgroups of non-haematological medical ICU patients were assessed, as well as the influence of leukocytopenia. RESULTS: The proportion of haematological patients among all medical ICU patients increased over time [odds ratio (OR) 1.06; 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.03-1.10 per year; p /=1.0 x 10(9)/L (45 %; 95 % CI 42-49 %), respectively, than for patients admitted with chronic heart failure (27 %; 95 % CI 26-28 %) and with chronic liver cirrhosis (38 %; 95 % CI 35-42 %), but was not significantly different from patients admitted with solid tumours (40 %; 95 % CI 36-45 %). Over the years, the risk-adjusted hospital mortality rate significantly decreased in both the haematological and non-haematological group with an OR of 0.93 (95 % CI 0.92-0.95) per year. After correction for case-mix using the APACHE-II score (with WBC omitted), a WBC