Admissions to the Coronary Care Unit (CCU): Comparison With International Data

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular diseases constitute the cardinal cause of death in the industrialized world, although a decrease in their mortality has been achieved during the last few years. Cardiac emergencies pose a significant hazard for the patient’s life and need to be managed in a coronary care unit (CCU), which can provide intensive monitoring and safety to perform advanced invasive and non-invasive therapeutic maneuvers. Based on data derived from patients admitted to the CCU of our institution, we present a comparison against international data, in terms of the patients’ basic epidemiological features. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Epidemiological data from the patients admitted to the CCU of Evagelismos Hospital during the year 2007 were recorded and analyzed. Comparison with data available in the litterature regarding CCU admissions in European and American hospitals was also performed. RESULTS: In the CCU of our institution 529 patients were admitted and managed by the staff of the first department of cardiology in the year 2007. Forty-four per cent of them had suffered an ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction, 18% were admitted due to a non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction or unstable angina, 21% because of significant arrythmias and in 17% the reason of admission was decompensated heart failure and/or pulmonary edema. The mean length of stay was 2.36 days. We found our data in agreement with other European reports although certain differences were noted in comparison with registries from the US, where heart failure prevails in admission diagnoses and there is a slightly longer duration of stay in the CCU. CONCLUSION: The characteristics of the patients admitted in the CCU of a large Greek tertiary medical center are similar to those of the average European patients. On the other hand, CCU patients in the US have a somewhat different profile, which may in part reflect differences in the organization and delivery of health care services. I N T R O D U C T I O N In the beginning of the 20th century, cardiac diseases were responsible for less than ORIGINAL ARTICLE Coronary Care Unit, Evagelismos General Hospital of Athens, Athens, Greece HOSPITAL CHRONICLES 2008, 3(4): 182–186 Correspondence to: Aikaterini Michalopoulou, RN Davari 12, Neos Kosmos Athens, Greece Tel. 2109025903 E-mail: michalopoulou.kaiti@hotmail.com