Secondary Analysis on Pressure Injury in Intensive Care Units

Patients with Pressure injuries (PIs) may have pain and discomfort, which results in poorer patient outcomes and additional cost for treatment. This study was a part of larger research project that aimed at prediction modeling using a big data. The purpose of this study were to describe the characteristics of patients with PI in critical care; and to explore comorbidity and diagnostic and interventive procedures that have been done for patients in critical care. This is a secondary data analysis. Data were retrieved from a large clinical database, MIMIC-III Clinical database. The number of unique patients with PI was 2,286 in total. Approximately 60% were male and 68.4% were White. Among the patients, 9.9% were dead. In term of discharge disposition, 56.2% (33.9% Home, 22.3% Home Health Care) where as 32.3% were transferred to another institutions. The rest of them were hospice (0.8%), left against medical advice (0.7%), and others (0.2%). The top three most frequently co-existing kinds of diseases were Hypertension, not otherwise specified (NOS), congestive heart failure NOS, and Acute kidney failure NOS. The number of patients with PI who have one or more procedures was 2,169 (94.9%). The number of unique procedures was 981. The top three most frequent procedures were ‘Venous catheterization, not elsewhere classified,’ and ‘Enteral infusion of concentrated nutritional substances.’ Patient with a greater number of comorbid conditions were likely to have longer length of ICU stay (r=.452, p<.001). In addition, patient with a greater number of procedures that were performed during the admission were strongly tend to stay longer in hospital (r=.729, p<.001). Therefore, prospective studies focusing on comorbidity; and diagnostic and preventive procedures are needed in the prediction modeling of pressure injury development in ICU patients.