• Christian Rabe, Ulrich Mey, Michael Paashaus, Annemarie Musch, Selcuk Tasci, Axel Glasmacher, Ingo G h Schmidt-Wolf, Tilman Sauerbruch, and Franz Ludwig Dumoulin.
• Department of Medicine, University of Bonn, Germany. Rabe@uni-bonn.de
• J Crit Care. 2004 Mar 1; 19 (1): 29-35.

PurposeTo assess the prognosis of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and pulmonary infiltrates requiring mechanical ventilation.DesignA retrospective cohort study.SettingA medical intensive care unit (ICU) in an academic tertiary care center.Patients And MethodsWe identified 30 consecutive patients with acute myeloid leukemia and pulmonary infiltrates who received invasive mechanical ventilation and compared clinical and laboratory parameters between ICU survivors and ICU non-survivors using non-parametric statistics.ResultsThe overall mortality rate was 87% (26/30). The survival was 40 % (4/10) for patients aged 50 years or less while none (0/20) of the patients older than 50 years survived (P <.02). The median time of mechanical ventilation in survivors was 23.5 (3-45) days. No differences between survivors and non-survivors were observed for the APACHE II score, oxygenation quotient, liver function tests, creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, or prognostic parameters of acute myeloid leukemia (presence of blasts on bone marrow aspirate, cytogenetic studies, and intensity of the chemotherapy regimen).ConclusionsAge seems to be an important prognostic parameter in our cohort of 30 consecutive patients with acute myeloid leukemia and pulmonary infiltrates requiring mechanical ventilation. Prolonged ventilation does not preclude survival.

28 keywords...

hide…