The crude incidence of ICU infections remains high, although the rate varies between ICUs and patient subsets, illustrating the added burden of nosocomial infections in the use of ICU resources.

No abstract

The logistic model that we developed meets high standards for discrimination and calibration. However, SAPS loses its discriminative power over time; accuracy of prediction is maintained at an acceptable level only in patients who stay in the ICU no longer than 5 days. The stay in the ICU represents a complex variable, which is not predictable, that influences the performance of SAPS on the first day.