The impact of patient sex on intensive care unit admission: a blinded randomized survey

Abstract

The gender distribution in intensive care units is consistently found to be around 60% men and 40% women. This might be medically sound. Our main purpose with this study was to investigate if physicians admit men and women to the intensive care unit equally. We sought to answer this question using a blinded randomized survey study. We used an online survey tool, with a hyperlink on European society of intensive care medicine webpage. Responders were randomized to either a critical care case Jane or a critical care case John, otherwise identical. The responders were asked if they would admit Jane/John to an intensive care unit, yes or no. Possible differences in admittance rate on the basis of the gender of the patient were analysed. In addition, we analysed if the gender of the responder affected admittance rate, regardless of the gender of the patient. 70.1% of the responders randomized to the John case opted to admit, vs. 68.3% of the responders randomized to the Jane case, p = 0.341. Regardless the gender of the patient, 70.1% of male responders opted to admit the patient, vs. 69.7% of female responders, p = 0.886. In this blinded randomized multicentre survey study, we could not demonstrate any difference in willingness to admit a patient to ICU, solely based on the gender of the patient. Patient gender as a factor for ICU admittance. A blinded randomized survey.