Use of the logistic organ dysfunction system to study mortality in an Indian intensive care unit

Background, Mortality in Indian intensive care units has not been well stud ied, Scoring systems are used to predict mortality of patients admitted to such units, Some scoring systems predict hospital mortality while others pr edict mortality in intensive care units. We used the logistic organ dysfunc tion system to study the hospital and intensive care unit mortalities in ou r intensive care unit. Methods. We prospectively studied 527 consecutively admitted patients in 19 97 to the medical intensive care unit in St John's Medical College Hospital , Bangalore. The outcomes studied were death in hospital and death in the i ntensive care unit. Using standardized mortality ratios, we compared our ob served hospital and intensive care unit mortalities with the hospital morta lity predicted by the logistic organ dysfunction system. Results. The standardized mortality ratios for hospital deaths was 1.3 with a confidence interval of 1.17-1.49 and for intensive care unit deaths it w as 1.0 with a confidence interval of 0.89-1.18. The hospital mortality rate s in our setting are significantly higher (p<0.05) than the predicted hospi tal mortality rates of the published western model for intensive care unit patients. The intensive care unit mortality rates are not significantly dif ferent from the predicted hospital mortality rates of the published western model for intensive care unit patients. Conclusion. Our intensive care unit mortality rate is comparable to the wes tern hospital mortality rate. However, after transfer of patients out of th e unit, the hospital mortality is higher.