Patients admitted to cardiac intensive care units often are not suffering from cardiac conditions, rather they are admitted for other conditions, such as sepsis or renal failure, according to a study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
The researchers investigated Medicare data from 3.4 million cardiac ICU admissions between 2003 and 2013.
"In order to get admitted to a CICU, you either have a primary cardiac condition — such as a heart attack or heart failure — or you have a sick heart from a prior event and now are admitted with a primary noncardiac condition — such as sepsis or lung or kidney failure," said lead author Shashank S. Sinha, MD, an advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation fellow at University of Michigan's Frankel Cardiovascular Center. "We found a remarkable rise in primary noncardiac conditions associated with a rise in secondary cardiac comorbidities."
Researchers found 51.7 percent of cardiac ICU admissions had a primary noncardiac diagnosis in 2013, up from 38 percent in 2003. The fastest-growing noncardiac reasons for admittance were infection infectious diseases and respiratory diseases.