Predictors of Mortality of Oncological Patients Admitted in the Pediatric ICU of a Tertiary Reference Hospital

Abstract

Cancer in the childhood and adolescence age group is considered rare. Despite this, the incidence of new diagnoses is increasing every day, as well as an increase in the cure rate, which is due, among other reasons, to the intensification of cancer treatment. As a consequence, these patients end up needing intervention in intensive care units (ICU). When compared to other patients, the mortality rate of cancer patients was higher than the general mortality in the pediatric ICU. For this reason, it is important to identify prognostic factors that can guide the early admission of these patients to the ICU. This study evaluated several variables related to the cancer patient admitted to the ICU, correlating them with the clinical outcome. Some variables were identified that increased the risk of the patient presenting with death as outcome, namely the number of organic dysfunctions on admission, the use of cardiotoxic chemotherapy, the use of nephrotoxic medications and the number of interventions performed on the patient in the first hours in the ICU. It is hoped that with this article, teams that provide health care to pediatric cancer patients will be able to identify children and adolescents in need of ICU interventions earlier, thus increasing their survival rate.