Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients Admitted to a Tertiary Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Western Black Sea Region of Turkey

Background While the mortality rate in paediatric intensive care units (PICU) is as low as 2.39% in developed countries, this rate is much higher in developing countries. Objective To evaluate the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients admitted to a tertiary pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in Karabuk, Western Black Sea Region of Turkey. Methods 88 critically ill children who were admitted to the PICU between June 2023 and June 2024 were retrospectively analyzed. It were evaluated age, gender, presence of chronic disease, reason for admission to the PICU, length of stay in both the intensive care unit and hospital stay, need and duration of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC), need and duration of invasive mechanical ventilation, type of nutrition, need for inotropic drugs, the glasgow coma scale (GCS), nutrition, pretransport pediatric risk of mortality (PRISM) score and mortality rates. Results Forty-three (48.9%) of these patients were female. The median age of the patients was 4.5 years [1.0-12.75]. According to the intensive care unit hospitalisation diagnoses, 37 (42.0%) of the patients had respiratory distress at the highest rate.It was observed that 24 (27.3%) of the patients had a chronic disease. Mechanical ventilation support was required in 19.3% of patients admitted to PICU, and the mean duration of mechanical ventilation was 10.0 [1.5-50.0] days. Moreover, 38.6% of patients required high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy. Among patients hospitalized in PICU, the median length of stay in the intensive care unit was 4.0 [2.0-6.0] days and the median length of hospitalization was 7.0 [4.0-13.0] days. GCS score was found to be significantly lower in the group with mortality (p= 0.004). PRISM scores of patients with mortality were found to be statistically significantly higher (p