Epidemiologic study of patients with cancer admitted in intensive care

Background and Objective: Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world and the third cause of death in Iran. Evidence suggests that some of the cancer patients are admitted to intensive care units according to their demand. The need for hospitalization in this ward can vary according to different factors such as gender, age, type of disease, etc. Therefore, this study has been designed in order to investigate the epidemiology of cancer patients admitted to intensive care units. Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study population includes all cancer patients admitted to the intensive care units of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in the years 2013-2016. The records of all patients were included in the study through census and the necessary information was extracted. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 24 in terms of percentage, mean, standard deviation through Chi-square test. Findings: 12273 patients were admitted to intensive care units during the study period, among whom 380 (3.9%) were cancer patients. The age range of patients with cancer was between 16 and 96 years old with the mean value of 60.11 years and the standard deviation of 17.49 and the majority of patients (52.4%) were males. The frequency of patients in terms of the type of cancer includes 40% of gastrointestinal cancer, 20% of brain cancer, 9.2% of lung cancer, 6.6% of kidney cancer, 6.6% of breast cancer, 5.5% of blood cancer, and 11.8% of other cancers. The mortality rate of cancer patients admitted to ICUs was 36.1%. The frequency of patients with gastrointestinal, lung, blood, kidney and brain cancers admitted in the intensive care units in males was significantly higher than females (p <0.001). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that, despite the need to receive intensive care in cancer patients due to the lack of beds in these wards, unfortunately, cancer patients are less admitted in these wards, therefore, practical measures should be considered in this regard, such as the establishment of intensive care units for cancer patients.

Keywords:

Cancer , Neoplasms , Hospital , epidemiology