clinical profile and outcomes of children admitted to a brazilian icu

Background: the aim of this study was to describe the clinical profile of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (picu) in southeast brazil and to analyze predictive factors associated with mortality.methods: a retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted over a 24 month (august 2018–2020), including 562 patients aged 1 month to 18 years admitted to the picu. patients were categorized into two groups: cardiac and non-cardiac diseases. mann-whitney u, fisher’s exact test, and logistic regression were used for group comparisons, with a significance level set at 5%. results: the median age of the patients was 31 months (interquartile range 9-108), with 53.9% being male. surgical interventions predominated (51.2%), primarily for congenital heart diseases (38.8%). other frequent causes of admission included respiratory disease (19%) and sepsis (14.1%). children with cardiac diseases had a higher incidence of mechanical ventilation (66.5% vs. 48%, p<0.001) and vasoactive drug use (57.3% vs. 24.7%, p<0.001). however, they had shorter durations of invasive ventilation (1 vs. 5 days, p<0.001) and vasoactive drug use (2 vs. 3 days, p=0.032) compared to non-cardiac patients. a total of 38 patients (6.8%) died, with a higher mortality rate observed among those with non-cardiac diseases (9% vs. 3.2%, p=0.009). conclusion: non-cardiac patients had higher mortality rates and longer durations of invasive mechanical ventilation and vasoactive drug use. cardiac disease patients experienced more favorable clinical outcomes in this study population.