No differences in APACHE II at admission, origin of the patients (community, ward, nursing homes), use of devices (CVC, UC etc), emergency surgery, extra renal depuration, immunosuppression or antibiotics at admission or before VARI.
We also noted the duration of hospital stay before ICU admission, medical or surgical (emergency or elective) reason for admission, origin (home, ambulance, emergency room, hospital ward, other hospital), length of ICU stay, ICU and hospital survival.
A prospective analysis of the data of all patients admitted to the ICU during the study period in order to classify all the first admission origins into four subgroups (ward, operating room, Emergency Department and specialized coronary and gastro-hepatology ICU), and to evaluate the different patient needs of ICU resources in these different patient populations (see Table 1).
Patient demographics, diagnosis at ICU admission, sepsis origin, and Simplified Acute Physiology Score II score were recorded at inclusion.
The categorical variables analysed included sex, antibiotics received at admission, patient origin, diagnostic category at admission, trauma patients (with or without surgical intervention), immunodeficiency, invasive devices and in-hospital death.
The potential confounders tested were sex, age category, SAPS II, diagnostic category at admission, patient origin, diagnostic category, central venous catheterization, mechanical invasive ventilation, urinary catheterization and antibiotics received at admission.
In addition to recording clinical variables collected from the computerized information system (Metavision; IMDsoft, Tel Aviv, Israel), we recorded the age, sex, admission category, origin (home, emergency room, or ward), and McCabe score of each patient [ 17].
The acquired dataset included the patients' demographic information, reason for admission, department of origin, infection site, blood culture results and laboratory characteristics.
The University of California may be blind to race, ethnicity and gender in its admissions, but geographic origin is fair game, and, according to Christine Van Gieson, director of admissions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, students applying from outside California receive extra attention in the review process and have an increased number of scholarships available to them this year.
All K. pneumoniae isolates were from blood cultures taken more than two days into the admission, implying a nosocomial origin.
When IE was diagnosed, we collected for each patient information about demographics, pre-existing comorbidities, condition at ICU admission, initial valve status, origin of infection, microbiological data, echocardiographic data, and extra-cardiac involvement revealed by initial work-up.
