Gender and survival of critically ill patients: results from the FROG-ICU study

PURPOSE: Few studies analyzed gender-related outcome differences of critically ill patients and found inconsistent results. This study aimed to test the independent association of gender and long-term survival of ICU patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: FROG-ICU was a prospective, observational, multi-center cohort designed to investigate the long-term mortality of critically ill adult patients. The primary endpoint of this study was 1-year mortality after ICU admission of women compared to men. RESULTS: The study included 2087 patients, 726 women and 1361 men. Women and men had similar baseline characteristics, clinical presentation, and disease severity. No significant difference in 1-year mortality was found between women and men (34.9% vs. 37.9%, P = 0.18). After multivariable adjustment, no difference in the hazard of death was observed [HR 0.99 (95% CI 0.77–1.28)]. Similar 1-year survival between women and men was found in a propensity score-matched patient cohort of 506 patients [HR 0.79 (95% CI 0.54–1.14)]. CONCLUSION: Women constituted one-third of the population of critically ill patients and were unexpectedly similar to men regarding demographic characteristics, clinical presentation, and disease severity and had similar risk of death at 1 year after ICU admission. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01367093; registered on June 6, 2011. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13613-019-0514-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.