Critically ill medical patients, their demographics and outcome

There are few reports describing the demographic details and outcome of non coronary medical patients on adult general intensive care units. It is not known how medical patients differ from other critically ill patients and ho w this may influence their outcome. Consequently, we recorded the demograph ic details of 374 critically ill medical patients and followed their surviv al for up to 3 years. Patients referred from medical specialties are younge r, more severely ill and suffer a higher severity-of-illness-adjusted inten sive care unit mortality than other patients. The short-term survival of me dical patients is poor with a median survival of 40 days. Twenty per cent o f medical patients die after discharge from intensive care but before 40 da ys. However, the long-term survival of medical patients is better than othe r patients and almost as good as the general population. Further research i s required to identify those patients who are likely to survive beyond 40 d ays.