Drug use in an intensive care unit and its relations to survival.

Admissions during the first 6 months of 1978, 427 in all, have been reviewed in relation to their pharmacological treatment and mortality rates. They have been divided into five groups according to their diagnoses, and for mortality evaluation. Tagge's prognostic classification was applied. Length of stay, number of drugs used in each patient, and cost of pharmacological therapy, do not have a significant relation to survival. Conclusions stress the great importance of determining uniform admission criteria to evaluate the degree of effort in money, personnel and hospital support to be spent on these kind of patients.