Quality of life 9 years after an intensive care unit stay: a long-term outcome study.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess long-term mortality after an intensive care unit (ICU) stay and to test the hypotheses that (1) quality of life improves over time and (2) predictions of outcome made by caregivers during an ICU stay are reliable.

Materials And Methods: Data from a 6-bed university medical ICU were reviewed. Telephone assessment of mortality and interviews/questionnaires 9 years after an ICU stay were performed.

Medical futility: predicting outcome of intensive care unit patients by nurses and doctors--a prospective comparative study.

Objective: First, to assess the pattern of the prediction of intensive care unit patients' outcome with regard to survival and quality of life by nurses and doctors and, second, to compare these predictions with the quality of life reported by the surviving patients.

Design: Prospective opinion survey of critical care providers; comparison with follow-up for survival, functional status, and quality of life.

Setting: Six-bed medical intensive care unit subunit of a 1,000-bed tertiary care, university hospital.

DNR orders at a tertiary care hospital--are they appropriate?

Questions Under Study: There are no established recommendations in Switzerland on when, how and for what patients DNR orders should be written. Moreover, little is known about current attitudes, patients' preferences, patients' involvement in decision-making and the adequacy of such decisions. The study was conducted in a Swiss tertiary care hospital to investigate the epidemiology, manner of application and appropriateness of DNR orders.