ArticleIntensive care medicine2020
Access to intensive care in 14 European countries: a spatial analysis of intensive care need and capacity in the light of COVID-19.
Article in Intensive care medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 90 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
90 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Incidence of Diabetic Ketoacidosis Among Pediatrics With Type 1 Diabetes Prior to and During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2022Pooled it
- The burden of COVID-19-related intensive care admissions in the Nordic countries, 2020-2023.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Critical care resource disparities in China: a nationwide survey and policy recommendations for health equity.Critical care (London, England) · 2026Article
- Decreasing admissions in older and increasing mortality in younger patients: a nationwide observational study of all German ICU cases 2011-2022.Critical care (London, England) · 2026Observational
- The next frontier in sepsis: connected ICU data for real-world clinical decision making.Intensive care medicine · 2026Review
- Impact of Cirrhosis Etiology and Intensive Care Accessibility on Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding: A Prospective Observational Study.Canadian journal of gastroenterology & hepatology · 2026Observational
- Association between the neutrophil-to-albumin ratio and mortality in patients undergoing tracheal intubation: a retrospective cohort study.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Beyond bed counts: equity and access to adult intensive care in middle-income countries, the Brazilian case.Critical care science · 2026Article
- Geospatial Insights into Healthcare Accessibility in Europe: A Scoping Review of GIS Applications.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Optimizing Emergency Response in Hospitals: A Systematic Review of Surge Capacity Planning and Crisis Resource Management.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Covert Triage During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Analysis of Rationing in Intensive Care.Chest · 2025Article
- Trying to create order in chaos-healthcare workers' perspective of COVID-19 intensive care (a qualitative study).BMJ open quality · 2025Article
- Characteristics, Outcomes and Recovery of Patients 65 Years or Older Admitted to Swedish Intensive Care Units: A Protocol for a Longitudinal Observational Multicentre Study.Nursing in critical care · 2025Article
- Integrated Psychosocial Care in Intensive Care (IPS-Pilot): Protocol for the Systematic, Multimethod Development of a Complex Intervention (Phase A).JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Diagnoses and critical care outcomes in a rural Tanzanian high dependency unit: A prospective cohort study.PloS one · 2025Article
- The role of vaccination, testing, and public restriction policies in COVID-19 mortality and incidence: insights from Global Burden of Disease regions.Archives of medical science : AMS · 2025Article
- Triglyceride glucose index and mortality in tracheally intubated patients: a MIMIC-IV retrospective cohort study.PloS one · 2025Article
- COVID-19 and nurses' ethical issues: Comparisons between two European countries.Nursing ethics · 2024Article
- Relationship between GPS-based community mobility data and orthopedic trauma admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: a multicenter analysis.Wiener klinische Wochenschrift · 2024Article
- Analysing the intra and interregional components of spatial accessibility gravity model to capture the level of equity in the distribution of hospital services in Italy: do they influence patient mobility?BMC health services research · 2024Article
30 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses major challenges to health-care systems worldwide. This pandemic demonstrates the importance of timely access to intensive care and, therefore, this study aims to explore the accessibility of intensive care beds in 14 European countries and its impact on the COVID-19 case fatality ratio (CFR).
methodsWe examined access to intensive care beds by deriving (1) a regional ratio of intensive care beds to 100,000 population capita (accessibility index, AI) and (2) the distance to the closest intensive care unit. The cross-sectional analysis was performed at a 5-by-5 km spatial resolution and results were summarized nationally for 14 European countries. The relationship between AI and CFR was analyzed at the regional level.
resultsWe found national-level differences in the levels of access to intensive care beds. The AI was highest in Germany (AI = 35.3), followed by Estonia (AI = 33.5) and Austria (AI = 26.4), and lowest in Sweden (AI = 5) and Denmark (AI = 6.4). The average travel distance to the closest hospital was highest in Croatia (25.3 min by car) and lowest in Luxembourg (9.1 min). Subnational results illustrate that capacity was associated with population density and national-level inventories. The correlation analysis revealed a negative correlation of ICU accessibility and COVID-19 CFR (r = - 0.57; p < 0.001).
conclusionGeographical access to intensive care beds varies significantly across European countries and low ICU accessibility was associated with a higher proportion of COVID-19 deaths to cases (CFR). Important differences in access are due to the sizes of national resource inventories and the distribution of health-care facilities relative to the human population. Our findings provide a resource for officials planning public health responses beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic, such as identifying potential locations suitable for temporary facilities or establishing logistical plans for moving severely ill patients to facilities with available beds.
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