Gender and survival of critically ill patients: results from the FROG-ICU study

Abstract Purpose Few studies analyzed gender-related outcome differences of critically ill patients and found inconsistent results. This study aimed to test the independent association of gender and long-term survival of ICU patients. Materials and methods FROG-ICU was a prospective, observational, multi-center cohort designed to investigate the long-term mortality of critically ill adult patients. The primary endpoint of this study was 1-year mortality after ICU admission of women compared to men. Results The study included 2087 patients, 726 women and 1361 men. Women and men had similar baseline characteristics, clinical presentation, and disease severity. No significant difference in 1-year mortality was found between women and men (34.9% vs. 37.9%, P = 0.18). After multivariable adjustment, no difference in the hazard of death was observed [HR 0.99 (95% CI 0.77–1.28)]. Similar 1-year survival between women and men was found in a propensity score-matched patient cohort of 506 patients [HR 0.79 (95% CI 0.54–1.14)]. Conclusion Women constituted one-third of the population of critically ill patients and were unexpectedly similar to men regarding demographic characteristics, clinical presentation, and disease severity and had similar risk of death at 1 year after ICU admission. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01367093; registered on June 6, 2011.