Demographics and outcomes of critically ill patients transferred from other hospitals to a tertiary care academic referral center in Saudi Arabia

Rishu, Asgar H; Aldawood, Abdulaziz S; Haddad, Samir H; Tamim, Hani M; Al-Dorzi, Hasan M; Al-Jabbary, Ahmed; Al-Shimemeri, Abdullah; Sohail, Muhammad R; Arabi, Yaseen M

doi:10.1186/2110-5820-3-26

Annals of Intensive Care

Table 4 Comparison of studies from different countries evaluating outcomes of critically ill patients who had interhospital transfer

From: Demographics and outcomes of critically ill patients transferred from other hospitals to a tertiary care academic referral center in Saudi Arabia

Country, author, year	Percent of transferred patients of all ICU admissions	Transfer population	Transfer modality	Main findings
USA[3] (Rosenberg et al., Ann Intern Med 2003, 138(11):882–90)	23%	Medical	Not reported	Risk adjusted mortality was higher in transferred patients compared with direct admissions.
France[4] (Combes et al., Crit Care Med 2005, 33(4):705–10)	17%	Medical	Not reported	ICU mortality and SMR was higher for transferred patients compared with direct admissions.
Canada[5] (Hill et al., J Crit Care 2007, 22(4):290–5)	20.5%	Medical and trauma	Ground ambulance	Crude ICU and hospital mortality rates were significantly higher in transfer patients compared with patients with direct admission from ED. Adjusted analysis was significant only for ICU mortality but not for hospital mortality.
USA[7] (Golestanian et al., Crit Care Med 2007, 35(6):1470–6)	12%	Medical, surgical, and trauma	Not reported	Risk adjusted mortality was similar in transferred and nontransferred patients. Adjusted length of stay was significantly longer only in the transferred group of patients and greater hospital expenditure was associated with transferred patients.
Canada[6] (Sampalis et al., J Trauma 1997, 43(2):288–95; 295–6)	37%	Trauma	Air and ground ambulance	Adjusted mortality was higher in patients transferred from other hospitals compared to direct admission to a Level I trauma centre. Adjusted length of ICU and hospital stay was longer in transferred patients compared to direct admissions.
Saudi Arabia (our study)	8%	Medical, surgical, and trauma	Air and ground ambulance	Crude hospital and ICU mortality was lower in transferred patients compared with hospital ward patients. However, transferred patients had similar risk-adjusted mortality compared with nontransferred patients.

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