Mortality in a cardiac intensive care unit

There are no reliable data on mortality and morbidity of adult patients in modern university-based cardiac intensive care units. Therefore, the present study was aimed to provide complete data in respect to mortality and morbidity of all patients admitted between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2009 to the newly opened cardiac intensive care unit of the Heart Centre of the Cologne University Hospital. All patients admitted to the 6-bed intensive care unit of the Heart Centre of the University of Cologne between January 1 2008 and December 31 2009 were included in this study. A total of 684 patients were investigated. The majority of patients (71.1%) were male. The overall in-hospital mortality was 32.5%. The most frequent diagnosis was acute coronary syndrome (43.6%). Coronary angiography was performed in 45.5% of all patients. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was the reason for admission in 30.8%, the in-hospital mortality of those patients (46.0%) was much higher compared to the overall mortality. Our data demonstrate that despite state-of-the-art university-based intensive care medicine with modern equipment the mortality remains high. These findings will help in calculating the resources required to meet the increasing demand for intensive care medicine.