ED-to-ICU Time Is Associated with Mortality

To explore whether delays in time from arrival in the emergency department (ED) to arrival in the intensive care unit (ICU) are associated with mortality, researchers reviewed registry data for adults admitted to the ICU from the ED in six academic hospitals in the Netherlands from 2009 to 2016.

Of nearly 15,000 patients included in the analysis, median age was 59 years and 62% were men. The median ED-to-ICU time was 2.0 hours and overall hospital mortality was 22.2%. Patients with shorter ED-to-ICU times had higher illness severity scores and higher predicted and actual mortality than those with longer times. However, after adjustment for predicted mortality, the longest two quintiles of ED-to-ICU time were independently associated with inc…