SAVE MONEY ON TRAVEL DEALS

Although intensive care units treat a minority of patients, they consume a large proportion of hospital budgets. Lead author Juergen Graf from the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany, said economic constraints create pressure to ration ICU care -- and restricting demand for futile medical services by limiting access to the ICU, at least for those patients likely to die anyway, has been proposed as a way of lowering expenditures.

Graf and his colleagues conducted an assessment of health status of patients five years after discharge from the ICU, and combined this with an economic evaluation.

Of 354 patients admitted to the ICU with cardiac arrest, 204 died prior to discharge from the hospital. Of the 150 remaining, 40 died before year five, leaving 110 patients eligible for the survey.

The study, published in the journal Critical Care, said the health-related quality of life five years after discharge was only slightly lower than healthy controls of the same age and gender as the patients. The total cost for the ICU treatment of the 354 patients was almost $10 million.

 BREAKING STORIES

Study: Alcohol reduces brain volume

Prostate drug not linked to hip fracture

Blood pressure drug helps reduce plaque

Nursing mother can pass on codeine to baby

Eating green helps planet and waistlines

Wash. assisted suicide measure debated

Pectin appears to cut cancer risk

New, powerful pain control method studied

Blood replication proteins are identified

Statins may help avoid some miscarriages

New delivery system hikes vaccine response

1 in 7 men have genetic risk of balding

Hereditary angioedema drug is approved

New tool for brain surgeons is developed

New type of drug eluding stent is unveiled

FDA approves hemophilia A drug

Rapaflo OK'd to treat enlarged prostate

Drunk drivers allowed to fly jets

3 Chinese dairy firms apologize

Ballesteros says he has brain tumor