Age and sexes significance on vital signs and NEWS-score during PIG-assesment after intensive care

Sammanfattning: Background: Male sex and older age have been described as risk factors for readmission to the Intensive Care Unit [ICU]. The implementation of PIG-team can help to identify patients who are at risk for clinical deterioration or being readmitted to the Intensive Care Unit. The usage of National Early Warning Score [NEWS] has been proven to effectively discriminate patients who are at risk for unplanned readmission to the ICU, cardiac arrest or death within 24h. Aim: Analyse potential differences in vital signs and NEWS score between males versus females and patients over versus under 60 years of age. Also evaluate correlation between the different variables and risk for readmission to the ICU within 72h. Method: A retrospective, observational study was conducted, and all data analyses were made in the statistical software SPSS. The population (n=190) consists of patients from Centralsjukhuset i Kristianstad, during 2020 and 2021. Results: Overall, the analysis showed few significant differences in vital signs or NEWS scores between the different variables examined. A minor indication was that men and patients over 60 years old were at higher risk for readmission to the ICU (n=4). Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of PIG-team and the usage of NEWS to discriminate patients after ICU discharge. The study showed few significant differences in vital signs or NEWS scores between the examined groups, which verifies NEWS validity and reliability. Further studies with a higher quality of evidence are needed to examine risk factors for readmission to the ICU.