Elderly patients who survive ICU stay have high rate of death in following years
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 17:42
in Health & Medicine
An analysis of Medicare data indicates that elderly patients who are hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU) and survive to be discharged from the hospital have a high rate of death in the following three years, and that, in particular, patients who receive mechanical ventilation have a substantially increased rate of death compared with both hospital and general population controls in the first several months after hospital discharge, according to a study in the March 3 issue of JAMA.