The importance of differentiating between elective and emergency postoperative critical care patients.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the importance of separately analyzing data on elective and emergency surgery patients admitted postoperatively to intensive and intermediate care units.

Materials And Methods: A prospective observational study was performed in a tertiary care university hospital to assess the demographic and clinical differences between emergency and elective surgical patients (>14 years old). Group 1 included patients transferred to a floor bed or the ambulatory surgery unit for discharge home after a short stay (<12 hours) in the postanesthesia care unit.

Who receives postoperative intensive and intermediate care?

Study Objectives: To examine the effects of preoperative and intraoperative factors that determine whether to provide postoperative intensive or intermediate care.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: Tertiary-care university hospital.

The Israeli anesthesiology physician workforce.

Background: Anesthesiology is a vital specialty that permits the safe and humane performance of painful procedures. Most Israeli anesthesiologists are immigrants, while only a minimal number of Israeli medical school graduates enter the specialty. Unfortunately, the supply of immigrant physicians is declining due to falling immigration rates.

Evaluating intraoperative therapeutic and diagnostic interventions.

Unlabelled: A cost-conscious health care system requires detailed measures of its activities, including measurements of care provided to perioperative patients. Because there are no scoring systems that quantify the extent of intraoperative care interventions, we developed an intraoperative therapeutic intensity score (I-TIS). Physiological/biochemical monitoring and therapeutic interventions were assigned one to four points on the basis of the resource utilization and/or intensity of care they each reflect.