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Background: The mean hospital mortality of patients after intensive therapy in Germany is about 15%, the mortality within the intensive care unit about 8%. Short-term prognosis is mainly determined by severity of disease, type of disease and patient age., Factors in Intensive Care: The impact of disease severity is measured by acute physiology score systems. The significance of disease categories becomes apparent in disease states with a continuing high mortality. Age is an independent risk factor. The higher risk of older patients cannot be explained by different diagnosis, and it is not secondary to a less aggressive therapy. The same factors mainly determine long-term prognosis. The 5-year-survival rate after intensive therapy is around 60%, a 3-fold increase as compared to the general population. Dependent upon the disease category, survival curves of intensive care patients parallel survival curves of the general population 2 years after admission. Analysis of quality of life is based upon objective measurement and subjective estimation of health-related life quality in the physical, psychological, and social life domain. Patients after intensive therapy experience a moderate but significant decrease in quality of life. This is the case in global estimations of quality of life as well as in investigations of different life domains., Conclusion: The remaining quality of life is tolerable. This is in accordance with the positive overall judgement of intensive care by patients themselves. The chief problem of intensive care remain diseases with continuing high mortality.

Because it remained controversial, the use of selective digestive decontamination (SDD) in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) was chosen as the topic of the first European Consensus Conference in Intensive Care Medicine (ECCICM) in December, 1991. The Consensus Bureau decided to assess the impact of this conference 2 years afterwards. For this purpose, a questionnaire was sent to the members of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Societé de Réanimation de Langue Française and the Societé Française d'Anesthesie et Réanimation before the conference. The recommendations following the conference discouraged the systematic use of SDD in ventilated patients and urged the monitoring of bacterial resistance and adapting antibiotics to epidemiology of the units. Two years after the conference, the same questionnaire was sent to those physicians who had responded to the first one. Eighteen percent used SDD for all ventilated patients and 17% remain users after 2 years. Among the occasional (32%) or continual (17%) users of SDD, the regimens used were mostly intravenous cefotaxime (60% of systemic antibiotics) and a topical combination of polymixin E, tobramycin, and amphotericin B (62% of overall topical combinations). The antibiotics used were unchanged after 2 years in almost all cases. In conclusion, the short-term impact of the Consensus Conference on SDD in ICU patients has been poor. This may be related to the continuing insufficiency of strong, definite data regarding the impact of this technique upon mortality and the theoretical risk of resistance to antibiotics, thus allowing physicians to stick to their policies until there is new evidence.

Aim: the main aim of the study was to assess the applicability of the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II) to the evaluation of outcome quality within the framework of quality assurance in patients in a medical intensive care unit. The outcome parameter employed was hospital mortality, measured as mortality index (hospital mortality actually observed/predicted mortality), the predicted mortality being derived from the individual mortality risk calculated for each patient in accordance with SAPS II., Method: For the period of one year, the SAPS II score, the individual mortality risk, the mean scores, mortality risk, intensive care and hospital mortality, and the mortality index (99% confidence interval) were calculated with the aid of a specially developed program for all 1,114 patients kept under observation or treated for longer than 4 hours in the intensive care unit. The entries (data) were monitored by random checks for the correctness of the individual entries and overall completeness of patient inclusion. The applicability of the SAPS II for our own patient material was checked with the aid of Receiver Operating Characteristic curves. In compliance with the original SAPS II to include patients of a coronary care unit but not to evaluate them, only the 604 patients with the diseases of medical intensive care were taken into account for quality control. High-risk groups (patients older than 76, critically ill patients with a mortality risk of more than 0,5, patients receiving respiratory support) and individual diagnostic categories were considered separately as subgroups., Results: In the entire group, the mean mortality risk was 21,1% the observed intensive care mortality 11,2%, the hospital mortality 18,0%, and the mortality index 0,86 (0,75 to 1,00). The mortality actually observed, therefore, corresponded to that predicted on the basis of the SAPS prognostic system. Also in the subgroups of elderly patients, and individual diagnostic categories (cerebral, bronchopulmonary cardiovascular, gastrointestinal diseases), the mortality index did not differ significantly from 1,0. A mortality index significantly less than 1,0 (observed mortality significantly lower than predicted mortality) was found in the sub-groups of the seriously ill, of patients receiving respiratory support, and in the diagnostic category of intoxications. The monthly analysis showed fluctuating mortality indices which, however, never differed significantly from 1,0. The surface under the ROC curve for the entire group was 0,89, and 0.81-0.99 for the various diagnostic categories., Conclusions: The prognostic system SAPS II can be employed to evaluate the quality of outcome measured by hospital mortality in patients of a medical intensive care unit, provided that the applicability of the score is demonstrated for the patient material involved, the outcome of the overall group and of the high-risk groups is referred to the accuracy and completeness of the entered data is checked, and the scoring systems accepted as quality standard.

Length of intensive care therapy and the total length of stay in hospital are important determinants of hospital costs. We therefore analysed the correlation between score parameters of SAPS-II with the time spent in the intensive care unit (ICU), and also in the hospital, for 604 general medical intensive care patients (ICU group) and 510 coronary care patients (CCU group). The mean stay in the ICU was 3.68 days for ICU patients and 2.67 days for CCU patients. The total stay in hospital was 13.5 days vs 16.1 days with a mortality of 18% (risk of death 0.21) in ICU and 10% (risk of death 0.13) in CCU patients. In patients who died, duration of therapy in the ICU was significantly longer than in surviving patients (5.88 vs 3.20 days in the ICU group and 3.65 vs 2.56 days in the CCU group). In contrast, total hospital stay was significantly shorter in patients who died (8.6 vs 14.5 days in the ICU group and 8.8 vs 16.9 days in the CCU group) (p = 0.001). The risk of death calculated from SAPS II was significantly correlated with the duration of intensive care. There was a significant indirect correlation between risk of death and the total hospital stay. In ICU patients duration of intensive treatment and hospital stay correlated with age, heart rate, maximum systolic blood pressure, body temperature, BUN, serum bilirubin, and sodium (all signs of systemic inflammatory reaction and organ dysfunction); in CCU patients length of intensive treatment and hospital stay correlated with body temperature, diuresis, BUN, bicarbonate, minimum systolic blood pressure (as signs of organ perfusion). A low Glasgow Coma Score was correlated with prolonged intensive care in all patients. In conclusion, score data, appear a suitable tool to predict the duration of intensive care treatment and length of hospitalization, in addition to outcome, and thus serve as gauge of efficiency.

The German healthcare system offers a social network guaranteeing almost complete healthcare coverage to the German population (prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation). The system is supported by a multistructured network of public and private healthcare insurers. Fees for public insurance are equally paid by employers and employees. Healthcare expenditures heavily impact the salary levels of employees and, as a result, production costs of employers. About one third of all national healthcare spending goes to hospital care. In 1991, there were ICUs in half of all German hospitals; 3.2% of all hospital beds were ICU beds. As in most countries, the expansion in national healthcare costs in the last decade has become a serious problem in Germany. At total of 8.1% of the entire German gross national product is spent on health care, which has led to drastic governmental healthcare reform that began in 1993. The key points of this reform are: a) strict limitations on hospital budgets at 1992 levels including a new structure of hospital financing; b) controlled reduction of expenditures for medical drugs (which were formerly at the highest level in Europe); and c) controlled restriction of regional distribution for physicians. In a large German university hospital (1,461 beds; 91 ICU beds) expenses for intensive care medicine comprise about 12% of all hospital spending (5,356 deutsche mark/patient). More than 60% of these expenses are for personnel; 37% go toward drugs and medical materials. There are several possible starting points for cost containment in intensive care medicine in Germany: a) a task-adapted, countrywide diffusion of ICUs within the different levels of hospitals; b) a more selective provision of intensive care medicine (primary as well as secondary) to patients, depending on patient needs; c) a centralized and task-oriented admission and discharge policy; and d) cost containment in the use of drug therapy by centralized hospital purchasing and by establishing strict, rational, therapeutic principles. Some examples of the author's personal experience follow. In all German hospitals, expenses for personnel are about 60% to 70%. These expenses are fixed by official, standard wages. Cost containment by further restricting the number of personnel impairs the care provided. Improvements in organization and management may contribute to a higher degree of personal motivation for employees and, in turn, may result in higher working efficiency.

171 consecutive patients of a medical intensive care unit (age 18 to 81 years, mortality 24.6%) who were treated in the ICU for at least 72 hours were investigated in order to test the hypothesis, that the combination of therapeutic scoring (TISS) and physiologic scoring (APS) may improve the prognostic significance of score systems and/or the severity of disease classification in critically ill patients. Discrimination of survivors and non-survivors of the combined score was comparable to the results of isolated scores. A higher weighting of the physiology parameters in the combined score did not improve its prognostic significance. On the other hand, only the combined score implicated a linear increase of mortality with increasing score point values. - We conclude, that the combined score system improves the severity of disease classification in critically ill medical patients.

In spite of good correlations between cardiac output measurements by impedance and established invasive procedures (dye- and thermo-dilution) reported by numerous authors it is doubtful uptil now whether calculations of stroke volume according to the formula of Kubicek et al. (1974) can provide absolutely reliable results. The origin of the dz/dt curve and influencing factors of impedance wave have to be cleared up prior to the total acception of impedance cardiography as a reliable method for determining non-invasive stroke volume. This is true in spite of the agreement of all authors we know, that the reproducibility of the impedance cardiography values is as good as in dye or thermo-dilution measurements. However, for patient monitoring it is sometimes more important to assess the relative changes in stroke volume than to measure its absolute value. For long-term non-invasive monitoring of myocardial contractility in critically ill patients or after pharmacological interventions impedance cardiography may be recommended. Besides systolic time intervals, such as pre-ejection time and ventricular ejection time, three more reliable parameters can be derived from the first derivate of impedance wave. Impedance plethysmography has been shown as a reliable method to diagnose deep vein thrombosis and good correlations between impedance and strain-gauge plethysmography and phlebographic findings are reported. In addition fluid volume changes in the leg, venous capacity, venous outflow and arterial inflow may be determined by impedance plethysmography in a simple way. There is no doubt that alterations in the fluid content of biological tissue may measured by impedance technique. However, correlations between changes in the transthoracic impedance and fluid content of the thorax can be quantified only in a single subject which serves as its own control. Overall standardization is not possible. The reason for interindividual differences in the thoracic impedance at a given reduction of body water are due to anatomical differences, intrapulmonary air volume and pressure, location of the electrodes, electrical conductivity of the tissue and, above all, due to the position of the body. Therefore if transthoracic impedance is determined sequentially measurements must be performed with special attention to the position of the body to get reproducible results. Rapid infusion of colloids or blood transfusion may decrease transthoracic impedance due to intravascular volume expansion even at a net fluid lost during forced furosemide-induced diuresis or extracorporal hemodialysis.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)