Death on the general wards after discharge from ICU

A number of patients who were successfully discharged from intensive care unit (ICU) will subsequently die during their hospital admission. If the patients died on ward after discharge from ICU, this means there is either a substantial waste of resources in the ICU or a missed opportunity to prevent a death. It has been shown that hospital mortality of ICU patients averaged 27%. However, since an actual 17.9% of patients died in ICU, the remaining 9.8% died in the general wards after their discharge from ICU. Death in general hospital wards after ICU discharge contributes significantly to overall hospital mortality. Though some deaths were expected and probably inevitable, most occurred in patients who remained at risk on discharge or those who were expected to survive. Some of these deaths may be preventable by improvement of care in ICU or general ward. In Korea, there is little information available concerning the patients who died after discharge from the ICU and before discharge from the hospital. Our aim for this study was to identify the incidence and characteristics of the deaths occurring in the general wards after discharge from ICU.