Comorbidity Analysis on ICU Big Data

Comorbidity is the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient. As part of a larger research study, the aims of this study were to explore comorbid conditions in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and to compare the comorbidity across different demographic groups, and to determine what comorbid health problems coexisted in the patients with hospital-acquired pressure injury (HAPI). The average number of comorbid conditions was 6.4 with range from 0-20 in the ICU patients. African American patients had significantly more comorbid health problems than other race/ethnicity groups. Asian and Hispanic female patients showed higher comorbidity than male patients across age. The patients with HAPIs had significantly more comorbid health problems than the patients without HAPIs -- the average numbers were almost two-fold. We found comorbid health problems that existed with HAPI in ICU patients. ‘Other diseases of lung’ and ‘Disorders of fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance’ were most frequently coexisting health problems in the ICU patients with HAPI. Exploratory plots are helpful to discover patterns or hypotheses relevant to clinical management in critical care. Inclusion of patients’ comorbid health problems to ICU HAPI risk assessment may be helpful. Identification of patients at a high risk for the development of HAPI and the early preventative interventions can help reduce length of stay as well as costly complications.