Medical News: ICU Stay Common in U.S. Hospital Deaths - in Critical Care, General Critical Care from MedPage Today

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

American patients who die in the hospital are nearly five times more likely than those in England to spend some of their last days in the intensive care unit, according to a cross-national comparison.

Whereas more deaths occurred in the hospital in England (50.3% versus 36.6%), the proportion that involved intensive care was much higher in the U.S. (47.1% versus 10.1%), found Hannah Wunsch, MD, MSc, of Columbia University in New York City, and colleagues.
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