Postoperative patients in the intensive care unit: Identifying those who do not really need it.

Purpose: We evaluated severity-scoring systems as predictors of intensive care unit (ICU) need and created a new model for identifying postoperative patients who do not really need ICU.

Materials And Methods: The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), the Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the enUmeration of Mortality and Morbidity (POSSUM), and Simplified Acute Physiology Score III scores of 100 postoperative patients were calculated, and cutoff values for necessary ICU admission were obtained. Criteria for a "necessary admission" were death, length of stay more than 48 hours, need for vasoactive agents, or mechanical ventilation for more than 24 hours.