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As intensive care unit (ICU) resources become increasingly limited, accurate identification of which patients will benefit from intensive care becomes more important. Researchers performed a prospective cohort study of 832 patients aged 45 years and older with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma exacerbations who were admitted to 1 of 92 ICUs (724 patients) or 3 respiratory-high-dependency units (108 patients) in the U.K. Patients who had undergone surgery within the past 10 days were excluded.
Admitting physicians predicted the 180-day survival rate to be much lower than it actually was (49% vs. 62%). This bias toward predicting nonsurvival was most marked in patients with the lowest predicted survival rate of 3%, for who…