Outcome of patients with severe asthma in the intensive care unit

Abstract

Background: Because little has been reported about the outcome of severe asthma outside the US and western Europe, we performed a retrospective case analysis of patients treated in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) of a university hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to de-termine the management, complications and outcome of severe asthma requiring ICU admission. Methods: The records of patients with severe asthma admitted to the MICU between the periods of January 1996 to December 2003 were re-viewed. Sixty-one episodes from 54 patients were studied, of which 27 (44%) were male. Results: All patients were hypercapnic; 23 (38%) were ventilated. The Acute Physiological and Health Evaluation (APACHE) score II was significantly higher in the ventilated group (P< 0.0001). The pH was sig-nificantly lower and PaCO 2 was significantly higher in the ventilated group (P< 0.0001). All patients survived. Only 42% of patients our series received inhaled corticosteroids before admission. Conclusion: Our results suggestthat severe asthma requiring ICU ad-mission is now safely managed in ICUs. Our results are comparable to recently published data on the treatment of severe asthma in the ICU.