Survival of haematologic patients admitted to an Intensive Care Unit. A 16 years study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The survival of haematologic patients admitted to Intensive Care units (ICU) is so poor, that it is debatable whether they should be admitted or not to them. We aimed to find out the survival of these patients in an ICU to know if their admission is justified. PATIENTS AND METHOD: Retrospective study of 600 haematologic patients (49.4 ± 16.4 years, 58.3% male) representing a total of 660 different admissions to the ICU of a university hospital, with a 6 months follow-up. Haematologic diseases were: leukaemia (50.5%), lymphoma (18.7%), myeloma (10.0%), myelodysplasic syndromes (4.2%), aplastic anaemia or bone marrow aplasia (3.3%), thrombotic microangiopathies and HELLP syndrome (7.4%), and others. RESULTS: A total of 37.5% of patients survived. Survival of thrombotic microangiopathies and HELLP syndrome was higher (81.8% of patients) than that of leukaemias (26.6%) and lymphomas (49.1%). When the reason for ICU admission was respiratory failure with or without septic shock, the survival was lower (20 and 27% of admissions respectively) than when it was septic shock alone (58.7%). Survival of mechanically ventilated patients was 14.6%, that of those treated with any renal replacement therapy 32.4% and that of patients with both treatments 13.8%. From all mechanically ventilated leukaemia or lymphoma patients, 10.3% survived (93 days in the ICU per life saved) but only 7.7% were alive 6 months later. CONCLUSIONS: Considering that the ICU survival was higher than 10% for all the groups studied, we conclude that admission of haematologic patients to the ICU is appropriate.