ABSTRACT
A prospective analysis of 2431 patients admitted to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of Singapore General Hospital was conducted between January 1994 and June 1997. All patients were followed up until hospital discharge. This ongoing project serves as both audit and quality assurance in the SICU. The mean APACHE II score of patients was 12.67 ± 8.36 and the mean age was 59.17 ± 17.82 years. There were 157 re-admissions, giving a re-admission rate of 6.46%. Mortality rate for re-admitted patients was 48.4%. One hundred and four (4%) patients stayed in the SICU for more than 2 weeks. Thirty (29%) died before the SICU discharge. SICU mortality was 9.46%, hospital mortality was 10.86% and standardised mortality ratio was 1.95. Computerised tools that analyse ICU utilisation patterns and outcomes have the potential to better target resources and so lower hospital costs, reducing futile medical care by selecting patients for appropriate expensive ICU care.
The Singapore General Hospital is a 1700-bedded tertiary hospital with subspecialty intensive care units (ICUs), i.e. Surgical ICU, Cardiothoracic ICU, Neurosurgical ICU, Medical ICU, Burns ICU, Medical ICU, Coronary Care Unit and Neonatal ICU. The SICU receives patients from various surgical disciplines (Table I).
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