Prognostic factors of cancer patients admitted to the ICU in Brazil: a prospective cohort

Introduction

The objective of this study was to identify mortality in critically ill oncologic patients.

Methods

Data were collected prospectively from 120 consecutive patients who were admitted to the combined medical and surgical ICU. The primary outcome studied was overall ICU mortality.

Results

Overall, 49.2% of patients were older than 66 years old (our study median) and 55.8% were men. The median time for the length of stay was 3 days and the median time for the follow-up was 8 days. The ICU mortality and the hospital mortality were 35.8% and 46.7%, respectively. Through the Kaplan–Meier survival curve, there was significant difference among the patients' mortality with terminal stages of cancer and the patients' mortality with response to treatment. The median survival times were 13.47 and 29.4 days, respectively. The survival of patients with a need for invasive mechanical ventilation was fourfold to fivefold lower (P = 0.005). Through the Cox multiple regression, the variables related to ICU mortality were a higher length of hospital stay before the ICU admission (P = 0.003) and coagulopathy over the ICU stay (P = 0.035) (Table 1).

Table 1 Results of the final model of the Cox multiple regression (n = 120)

Conclusion

Our study suggest that patients in terminal stages of cancer who presented a higher length of hospital stay before ICU admission, coagulopathy and mechanical ventilation over the ICU stay have higher ICU mortality.