Objective: To describe a population of patients admitted in ICU in an homogeneous urban area by means of a computed system.
Experimental design: Observational study.
Setting: 20 general intensive care units of general and university hospitals.
Patients: Patients admitted in ICU from 1-1-1991 to 31-12-1991. 3 centers collected patients only for 6 months, starting on 1-6-1991.
Measurements: For each patient demographic data, hospitalization data, outcome, diagnosis and diagnostic procedures used during hospitalization according to defined criteria previously described, were collected. Data have been collected on PC using dedicated software.
Results: All centers concluded data collection, none abandoned the study. General characteristics of 4148 valuable patients were reported. Age was 52.9 years, SAPS 12.4 and mortality 21.7%. The patients spent 8.7 days in ICU and, when transferred to a general ward, the following hospitalization was 21.5 days.
Conclusions: Data collection demonstrated the project feasibility. It realizes a continue up to date system inside each unit and allows the use of a "common language" and homogeneous methodology between centers.