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The article discusses a cohort study about changes in characteristics of critically ill patients and their impact on long-term outcome. Linked data between the intensive care unit database and state-wide morbidity and mortality bases were utilized. Hospital survival and five-year survival of intensive care unit patients were examined through logistic and Cox regression methods. Five-year survival was seen to be particularly strong among patients admitted after cardiac surgery. Findings show that long-term survival has improved for the critically ill.

Healthcare utilisation can affect quality of life and is important in assessing the cost-effectiveness of medical interventions. A clinical database was linked to two Australian state administrative databases to assess the difference in incidence of healthcare utilisation of 19 921 patients who survived their first episode of critical illness. The number of hospital admissions and days of hospitalisation per patient-year was respectively 150% and 220% greater after than before an episode of critical illness (assessed over the same time period). This was the case regardless of age or type of surgery (i.e. cardiac vs non-cardiac). After adjusting for the ageing effect of the cohort as a whole, there was still an unexplained two to four-fold increase in hospital admissions per patient-year after an episode of critical illness. We conclude that an episode of critical illness is a robust predictor of subsequent healthcare utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]