Potentially Preventable Deaths by Intensive Care Medicine in Mongolian Hospitals.

. To evaluate the portion of hospitalized patients dying without prior intensive care unit (ICU) admission and assess whether death could have been prevented by intensive care. . In this prospective, observational, multicenter study, data of adults dying in and outside the ICU in 5 tertiary and 14 secondary hospitals were collected during six months. A group of experts categorized patients dying without prior ICU admission as whether their death was potentially preventable or not. . 617 patients died (72.9% in and 27.1% outside the ICU) during the observation period. In 54/113 patients (32.3%) dying in the hospital without prior ICU admission, death was considered potentially preventable. The highest number of these deaths was seen in patients aged 16-30 years and those who suffered from an infection (83.3%), underwent surgery (58.3%), or sustained trauma (52%). Potentially preventable deaths resulted in a total number of 1,078 years of life lost and 709 productive years of life lost. . Twenty-seven percent of adults dying in Mongolian secondary and tertiary level hospitals do so without prior ICU admission. One-third, mostly young patients suffering from acute reversible conditions, may have potentially been saved by intensive care medicine.