Excellence of the Closed Intensive Care Unit System in Critically Ill Surgical Patients

Seung Min Baik, Na Rae Yang, Tae Yoon Kim, Kyung Sook Hong.

Abstract

Despite reports that the closed intensive care unit (ICU) system improves clinical outcomes, it has not been widely applied for various reasons. This study aimed to propose a better ICU system for critically ill patients by comparing the experience of open surgical ICU (OSICU) and closed surgical ICU (CSICU) systems in the same institution.

Introduction

Although there are various definitions of a critically ill patient, it refers to a patient requiring intensive care due to life-threatening multiorgan dysfunction that can result in morbidity and mortality. Moreover, the intensive care unit (ICU) refers to a well-organized special space that allows these critically ill patients to receive appropriate treatment.

Materials and Methods:

Patients and data collection

Our institution converted the surgical ICU system from “open” to “closed” in February 2020. We conducted this study on patients admitted to the surgical ICU from March 2019 to February 2022, and the enrolled patients were classified into the OSICU (191 patients) and CSICU (560 patients) groups at that time from March 2019 to February 2022.

Statistical analysis

Categorical variables were analyzed using the chi-squared test and expressed as numbers and percentage.

Discussion:

To our knowledge, our study is the first in Korea to explore the effects of the CSICU system. We found that the CSICU system led by intensivists exerts a positive impact on patients’ prognosis and ICU operation [10–15]. This study chronologically investigated the effect of the application of the CSICU system on the clinical outcome of only surgical patients to confirm its usefulness in the surgical ICU.

Citation: Baik SM, Yang NR, Kim TY, Hong KS (2023) Excellence of the closed intensive care unit system in critically ill surgical patients. PLoS ONE 18(4): e0285035. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285035

Editor: Kartikeya Rajdev, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Pinnacle Health Medical Services, UNITED STATES

Received: January 26, 2023; Accepted: April 14, 2023; Published: April 26, 2023.

Copyright: © 2023 Baik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data cannot be shared publicly for confidentiality reasons. Data are available from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital (contact the committee by email: irbseoul@eumc.ac.kr) for researchers who meet the criteria for accessing confidential data.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.