Mortality in intensive care unit in Pinar del Rio province hospital

Introduction: intrahospital mortality rate is an important parameter in the analysis of health care and it is one of the elements that are usually taken into account when assessing the quality of a health care service or of an institution. Objective: to determine the behavior of mortality rate in the Intensive Care Unit at Dr. León Cuervo Rubio Teaching Clinical Surgical Hospital in 2018. Methods: an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional research was conducted. The target group consisted of 279 patients who died in 2018. The data were collected from the book of deceased and clinical histories. Absolute and relative percentage frequencies were used. Medical ethics were respected. Results: we found a predominance of deceased patients (51,76 %), of female gender (51,97 %) and the age group 70-79 (34,77 %). Patients hospitalized for 1 to 3 days represented 35,84 %. Necropsy was performed at 61,29 %. The cause of death was pneumonia (48,03 %), along with septic shock (15,41 %). Conclusions: old-aged patients with deteriorated health conditions were prone to admission to intensive care units and death after short stays, which are determined by unfavorable diagnoses and comorbidities such as respiratory infections.