APACHE and Brazilian intensive care units

Use of antibacterial agents in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Brazil

“…Added to this, there are procedural and administrative difficulties regarding the acquisition of technological resources, including the recruitment of sufficient numbers of qualified personnel. Furthermore, there are cultural factors that need to be considered [14]. A more specific explanation would relate the pattern of usage of antibacterial drugs to numerous determinant factors including the frequency of occurrence of resistant microorganisms and the existence of, and adhesion to, methods for controlling and rationalising antibiotic therapy.…”

Influence of time elapsed from end of emergency surgery until admission to intensive care unit, on Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) prediction and patient mortality rate

“…25 However, the Ministry's statistics show that, while there was a 14% increase in the number of intensive care beds in the public health system from 1995 to 2000, the growth in the expenditure on such services was 77.5% over the same period. 26 Thus, Brazil's public health system presents a scenario in which the emergency services are not in a position to cope with the whole demand from patients and there are insufficient numbers of intensive care 27 In spite of difficulties in establishing what the true demand is, it can be said that there is a major shortage of intensive care beds in Brazil. Over a three-year period, an intensive care unit in a large public hospital in Recife, State of Pernambuco, was only able to provide intensive care for 67.6% of the internal demand and 61.3% of the external demand, thereby denying intensive care to around 452 patients over that period.…”