Stroke in long-term intensive care unit

Abstract

Aim: Long-term acute care hospitals (LTACH) provide specialized care for patients recovering from severe acute diseases and for patients with chronic and critical illnesses; who need long-term ventilatory support. This study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the length of stay in our long-term intensive care unit (LTICU) in patients with stroke. Material and Method: This retrospective study included 200 stroke patients; who were followed up in the LTICU. The demographic characteristics, comorbid diseases, and culture results of the study patients were examined as variables and the effects of these variables on the length of intensive care unit stay were investigated. Result: Of the patients; the mean age was 79(41-99) years, 99 (49.5%) were males and the mean length of stay was 46 (7-463) days. The length of stay in LTICU was significantly long in stroke patients with a tracheostomy and positive growth in urine cultures (p = 0.013, p = 0.018). The length of stay was significantly short in patients; who received TPN (p = 0.006). Conclusion: Our study has demonstrated that growth in tracheostomy and urine cultures increased but TPN significantly decreased the length of stay of stroke patients in LTICU. To optimize LTACH facilities for stroke patients; we suggest that the overall pattern of the use of such centers should be better known, further integration with acute care units should be established, and further studies should be conducted.

Keywords

• Long term intensive care unit
• stroke
• tracheostomy
• urine cultures

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