For patients with COPD, heart failure and myocardial infarction, who are not critically ill, a stay in the ICU may be no more beneficial than staying on a ward, according to an analysis just published in the Annals of the ATS.

Thomas Valley, MD, MSc, a pulmonary and critical care researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School, and colleagues, analysed more than 1.5 million Medicare records. They estimated that approximately one in six patients was admitted to the ICU only because of living closest to a hospital that places a high percentage of its patients in ICU beds.

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