Long-term survival and quality of life in cardiac surgical patients with prolonged intensive care unit length of stay.

Background: Patients with prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) stays after cardiac operations are labor intensive and expensive. We sought to determine whether exhaustive ICU efforts result in survival or quality-of-life benefits and whether outcome could be predicted.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed all adult cardiac surgical patients in 1998 for ICU stays more than 14 days.