Epidemiology and outcomes of Oncology patients admitted in the ICU

With significant development of treatment of cancer patients, survival and prognosis have been continually improving both for solid and haematological malignancies. Since cancer and treatment related complications are common many patients may need admission to the ICU for managing infectious complications, respiratory failure, septic shock etc. Because of this, requirements for ICU services access and use will continue to increase. It is important to identify patients who are at risk of developing these complications and who will benefit from icu care.

Several prognostic factors including the need for vasopressors and invasive mechanical ventilation have been proposed however, their use in clinical practice is limited because of their lack of external validation and limited predictive power. Early admission to the ICU has been shown to improve survival. The ICU mortality rate in cancer patients is variable and can range between 30 percent and 77 percent. This wide range of mortality rates is due to the multiple factors that may affect outcome in these patients, such as malignancy type, cause of admission, presence of metastasis, number of organ failures, and therapies before ICU admission. We planned to study the characteristics of patients admitted to the ICU and risk factors associated with poor outcomes.