The impact of windows on the outcomes of medical intensive care unit patients

Summary: Backgrounds: The knowledge about the window effect on the outcomes of intensive care unit (ICU) patients remains limited and uncertain. This retrospective study investigated the impact of windows on the outcomes of patients admitted to the medical ICU. Methods: It was conducted in a medical ICU with 14 adult ICU beds including 7 window and 7 no-window rooms. The outcomes including length of ICU stay, in-ICU mortality and in-hospital mortality were measured. Results: During the study period, a total of 281 patients were admitted to the ICU, with 126 patients in window rooms and 155 in no-window rooms. These two groups of patients had similar clinical characteristics such as age, gender, disease severity, consciousness level, underlying diseases, and incidence of organ failure (all p > 0.05). Additionally, the incidence of delirium (37.3% vs 38.7%, p = 0.907), use of sedatives (50.0% vs 51.0%, p = 0.963), and use of antipsychotic agents (18.3% vs 18.7%, p = 0.945) were the same between these the window and no-window groups. The in-ICU and in-hospital mortality rates were not significantly different between groups (23.8% vs 20.0%, p = 0.533 for in-ICU mortality; 27.0% vs 24.5%, p = 0.734 for in-hospital mortality), but patients admitted to window rooms had shorter ICU stays than those admitted to no-window rooms (4.8 days vs 5.8 days, p = 0.045). Conclusions: We demonstrated that ICU rooms with windows are associated with shorter ICU stays than those without windows, suggesting that windows may be important in medical ICU rooms. Keywords: window, intensive care unit, outcome, length of stay, mortality