The primary goal of intensive care is to prevent mortality in patients with reversible critical illness. Iatrogenic illness can increase the morbidity or the mortality of hospitalized patients in Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs). Studying this illness is an indicator to improve quality of care. The aim of this prospective follow up study was to determine the incidence and risk factors of iatrogenic illness together with the outcome among cases admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of Gharian Teaching Hospital in an attempt to prevent or minimize such illness. This study included all consecutive admissions of patients over a 1 year period from January 2006 to January 2007 in PICU of Gharian teaching hospital and included 423 patients. The results of this study revealed that the incidence of iatrogenic illness among admitted cases was 22.93%, where human errors represented 18.44% and mechanical errors represented 4.49% among them. Higher incidence of iatrogenic illness was observed with: younger age infants (below 2 years) 27.55% (RR=2.22, CI=1.35-3.64, P |
