Community acquired infections among refugees leading to Intensive Care Unit admissions in Turkey

Highlights

• Refugees presented to ICUs with CA infections similar to the host populations.

• Turkish ICUs were not congested with the refugee patients’ influx for CA infections.

Abstract

Objectives

Data on the impact of refugees on Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are lacking in the literature, in particular for community-acquired (CA) infectious diseases, for which they are known to be at higher risk. We did a descriptive, multicenter study to analyze CA infections among refugee patients requiring ICU admission.

Methods

Inclusion criteria were adult refugee patients admitted to an ICU due to CA infections. Anonymized data were collected between January 1, 2010 and December 30, 2015 across 10 referral centers.

Results

29.885 patients were admitted to the ICUs in the study period. 37 patients were included the study, the majority were from Syria (n = 31, 83.8%). Mean (SD) age of the patients was 45.92 ± 20.16 years. The 5-year prevalence rate was 123.8 per 100.000 patients in the ICUs. All patients had at least one comorbid condition. Forty-nine CA infections were diagnosed. The most common CA infection was pneumonia (49%) followed by urinary-tract infections (16.3%). 21 patients (56.7%) hospitalized in the ICU had trauma history. Mortality rate was high at 22 patients (59.5%) with 5 (22.7%) deaths directly attributed to CA infections.

Conclusions

Refugees presented to ICUs with CA infections similar to the host populations (pneumonia and urinary-tract infections) but had high mortality rates (59.5%). It seems that Turkish ICUs were not congested with the refugee patients’ influx for CA infections. More research needs to be done to better understand how to deliver preventative and timely health care services to this group of patients.