Predicting ICU LOS after cardiac surgery
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Predicting length of stay in cardiothoracic intensive care following cardiac surgery: an evaluation of ICNARC and Euroscore as predictive models and analysis of risk factors
IRAS ID
225623
Contact name
Vivek Sharma
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
St. George's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
No suitable register,
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 0 days
Research summary
Healthcare expenditure constitutes a significant proportion of GDP in the UK (9.86% in 2017)6)1, with healthcare services facing a growing commitment to efficiency savings. Prolonged length of stay (LOS) impacts on the management and patient flow throughout hospitals. Increased LOS is directly linked to increased financial costs due to cancellations of planned surgery as a consequence of bed availability.
Bed availability in intensive care units (ICU) is a critical factor determining patient flow in hospitals and the provision of cardiac surgery. The cost of an ICU stay is high therefore, an increase in LOS has a significant cost implication. In addition to the financial cost, prolonged LOS results in bed shortages and the potential to cancel planned operations.
Predicting LOS can help to manage demands pre-emptively and manage capacity; providing a system that can improve patient flow through hospitals and resource allocation. There are a number of scoring models that have been created to predict length of stay following cardiac surgery. Many studies are limited by the variables included in each study. Only one study has previously included, preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative variables but the study was limited by the small sample size (212). Few studies have included all cardiac surgery operations in the analysis, which reflects cardiac ICU capacity and targets resource allocation more effectively.
The aim of this study is to identify factors that can predict patients who are at a higher risk of a prolonged ICU stay following cardiac surgery through analysis of post operative variables collected from two databases. It will give us the ability to get an individual's predicted length of stay based on their own unique pre and post operative physiological variables.REC name
North East - Tyne & Wear South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/NE/0158
Date of REC Opinion
18 Jun 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion