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ICU deaths in patients with advanced cancer: Criteria to decrease potentially inappropriate admissions and analysis of advance planning discussions.

47 Background: A significant number of advanced cancer admissions to intensive care unit (ICU) are inappropriate, as they do not prolonged survival. No clear consensus criteria for reasonable admissions of advanced cancer patients have been developed.


METHODS
We established four criteria for ICU admissions in advanced cancer patients: post procedure complication, recent cancer diagnosis, good performance status and life expectancy of > 6 months. We reviewed charts of all patients who died in the ICU at a university-affiliated hospital between 2005-2010. We then identified advanced cancer patients and looked for presence or absence of these criteria. We also reviewed evidence of advance planning discussions (APDs), prior to ICU admission to evaluate their benefit in preventing inappropriate admissions.


RESULTS
421 deaths occurred in ICU between 2005-2010. 52 patients had advanced cancer. 27% were diagnosed with cancer one month or less prior to admission. 40% had ECOG performance status of 0-1. 27% had life expectancy of more than 6 months and 15% were admitted for post procedure complications. Overall, 37% did not satisfy any of our reasonable criteria at the time of ICU admission. In our chart review for evidence of APDs, 31% had completed APDs prior to ICU admission. 47% of patients who did not satisfy any of our reasonable admission criteria had APDs indicating desire for limited medical intervention. Patients lacking both reasonable admission criteria and APDs were 15%.


CONCLUSIONS
Incorporating proposed admission criteria in ICU admission guidelines may prevent significant number of inappropriate, advanced cancer admissions to the ICU, thus avoiding ineffective, aggressive interventions and delay in timely access to high-quality hospice and palliative care. Our data confirms other data in suggesting that a simple increase in numbers of APDs would not likely change significantly the numbers of inappropriate ICU admissions. [Table: see text].