FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 12, 2001

SURVIVAL RATE OF UC DAVIS PEDIATRIC ICU PATIENTS
SECOND HIGHEST IN NATIONAL BENCHMARK TEST

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Children who are patients in the UC Davis Children's Hospital pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) have a higher likelihood of surviving their illness or injury when compared with other PICUs in national benchmark data. In fact, UC Davis PICU's survival rate is higher than all but one of a select group of 32 PICUs located throughout the country.

The UC Davis Children's Hospital PICU is especially designed for the severely ill infant and child up to the age of 15 years. Some of the typical admissions include children receiving surgery for congenital heart disease, or children with trauma or pneumonia.

"The children we see in this unit are the most critically ill, and the care we provide tips the scale daily between life and death," said James Marcin, a UC Davis School of Medicine assistant professor and physician who tracks the unit's performance. "Our team -- the doctors, nurses, therapists, child life specialists, dietitians and clergy -- can be proud that the vast majority of our patients are able to go home to their families."

The Pediatric Risk of Mortality (PRISM) benchmark data, collected and managed by Children's National Medical Center in Washington DC., comes from 32 pediatric intensive care units that represent both academic and non-academic, and nonprofit and for-profit units. PRISM measures a number of variables, such as heart rate, blood pressure and other factors, adjusted for severity of illness, to predict mortality in pediatric intensive care units. Some 50 pediatric organizations, including UC Davis Children's Hospital, subscribe to the benchmarking data as a way to estimate outcomes within their pediatric intensive care units and to measure their performance against other pediatric intensive care units.

UC Davis' number-two ranking comes from year 2000 data. In 2000, 843 children were admitted to the UC Davis Children's Hospital PICU. Of those patients, only 32 deaths were recorded, resulting in a mortality rate of 3.87 percent. Based on PRISM predictors, the mortality rate should have been 6.28 percent, or 52 patients.

UC Davis' PICU, headed by physician Robert Dimand and nurse manager Sandra Dallas, provides round-the-clock care for its patients. Attending physicians manage all care and at least one registered nurse is on duty at all times for every one to two patients. The unit serves the Northern California area through a critical care consultation line that connects UC Davis physicians to rural communities within two minutes, a telemedicine program that provides real-time consultations, and a Life Flight program that transport the most critically ill patients to Sacramento, accounting for up to 40 percent of the PICU admissions.

UC Davis Children's Hospital, located within UC Davis Medical Center, is a designated "hospital within a hospital" by the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions. The hospital provides a comprehensive range of inpatient and outpatient service, including the only Level 1 pediatric trauma and emergency service in the region.

Copies of all news releases from UC Davis Health System are available on the Web at
http://news.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu

MEDIA CONTACT:

Martha Alcott, Medical News Office: (916) 734-9027
Pager: (916) 762-9846

Health System | School of Medicine | Medical Center | Medical Group