More men than women are admitted to 9 intensive care units in British Columbia.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to determine if more males than females are admitted to adult intensive care units (ICUs).


METHODS
In 9 tertiary and community hospitals in British Columbia, Canada, we expressed the number of patients admitted to hospital and to ICU from 1998 to 2008 as a proportion of the population of the main regions served by these hospitals, and for ICU patients in 1 tertiary hospital, as a proportion of the hospital population. Patients not residing in the region of this tertiary hospital or whose addresses were unknown and admissions for sex-specific diagnoses were excluded from the main analyses. Male proportion was divided by female proportion for age groups by decade. Multivariate regression was used to determine the association between sex and admission to ICU after adjustment for confounders.


RESULTS
Normalized male-to-female ratio of ICU admissions to the 9 hospitals was greater than 1. In the tertiary hospital analyzed in more detail, the male-to-female ratio for admissions to hospital or to ICU, normalized to the population in the community or hospital, respectively, was greater than 1 for all age groups, and this ratio increased with age. After adjustment for covariates, males and females less than 80 years of age were roughly equally likely to be admitted to ICU from hospital, but in patients aged 80 or older, men were much more likely than women to be admitted (odds ratio, 2.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.56-2.94).


CONCLUSIONS
More men than women are admitted to ICUs; this difference is especially prominent in elderly patients.
Dodek
Peter
P
Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences, Providence Health Care, Vancouver, BC, Canada. pedodek@interchange.ubc.ca
Kozak
Jean-Francois
JF
Norena
Monica
M
Wong
Hubert
H
D000293:Adolescent; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001955:British Columbia / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017678:Sex Distribution; D055815:Young Adult