• N Conlon, B O'Brien, G P Herbison, and B Marsh.
• Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Eccles St, Dublin 7, Ireland. tallniamh@hotmail.com
• Br J Anaesth. 2008 Feb 1;100(2):219-23.

BackgroundIntensive care unit (ICU) re-admission identifies a high-risk group in terms of hospital mortality, length of stay, and resource utilization. Only hospital and ICU mortality are well described in the literature on critically ill patients needing re-admission.MethodsWith ethical committee approval, from a prospectively collected database of all admissions to a combined medical and surgical ICU from January 1 to December 31, 2004, we identified all ICU re-admissions from within the hospital and analysed the factors associated with increased incidence of re-admission. At 2-3 yr after discharge, we evaluated the functional outcome of the surviving re-admitted patients as Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS) and Karnofsky index and identified determinants of both mortality and good functional outcome.ResultsSeventy-three (7.4%) of the 1061 patients who survived their first ICU stay were re-admitted during the study period. Of the 73 re-admitted patients, 14 died in ICU, 17 died later in the same hospital stay, and 10 died in the interim. Thus, 32 (43.8%) were alive 2-3 yr after discharge. The median [IQR] GOS of the survivors was 4 (see Mackle and colleagues in One year outcome of intensive care patients with decompensated alcoholic liver disease.ConclusionsAlthough the ICU, hospital, and subsequent mortalities are high in patients after ICU re-admission, most survivors at 2-3 yr had by then made a good functional recovery and were independent.

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