Intensive care unit admission in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: patient information and the physician’s decision-making process

Table 4 Factors negatively influencing decisions of non-intubation among pulmonologists and intensivists (16-item questionnaire)

	High weight for pulmonologists	High weight for intensivists	Euclidean distance
General practitioner’s opinion	-	+	1.898
Smoking cessation	+	-	1.639
Physician’s perception of the patient’s quality of life	+	-	1.587
No family	-	+	1.547
Respiratory nurse’s opinion	+	+	1.237
Heart failure	-	+	1.222
Depression	+	+	0.916
Number of hospitalizations in last year	-	-	0.833
Age	+	+	0.735
Home oxygen	-	-	0.702
Family’s opinion	+	+	0.594
Forced expiratory volume in 1 second < 30%	-	-	0.566
Predicted number of hospitalizations with mechanical ventilation in last year	-	-	0.496
Other pulmonologist/intensivist’s opinion	+	+	0.477
Home non-invasive ventilation	-	-	0.475
Patient’s opinion	+	+	0.331

These data were obtained by principal component analysis. Large Euclidean distances indicate substantial differences between pulmonologists’ and intensivists’ responses, while short distances indicate similarity. The mark ‘+’ indicates a positive Y-coordinate in the principal component analysis, which means an important weight given to this item by the ‘pulmonologists’ data set or the ‘intensivists’ data set. Conversely, the mark ‘-’ displays a negative Y-coordinate which indicates a low item’s weight.

ISSN: 1364-8535