Background: Increased urbanization with change in lifestyle in many developing countries exposed them to the challenge of double disease burden, battling with the existing communicable infectious diseases as well as the emerging epidemic of NCDs.
Objective: To describe trends of medical intensive care unit admission over thirty years in Ethiopia.
Methods: MICU registries at Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital over a thirty year period were examined for discharge diagnosis. Data included for analysis were selected at ten-year interval of equivalent six- months' period from December to May of 1981/82, 1991/92, 2001/02 and 2011/12. Variables included were age, gender, residence, discharge diagnosis, duration of stay in hospital, discharge status, admission date, and admission source. Obtained data were cleaned, coded, recoded and edited. The analysis was done using SPSS 15.0 statistical soft ware.
Results: A total of 500 cases are included for analysis. Among these 284 (57%) were male. The mean age was 40.2 ± 18 years rangingfrom 13 to 87 years. The aggregate cardiovascular disease, other non communicable disease and infectious disease as a cause of admission in the past thirty years were 213 (42.6), 141 (22.8), 105 (20.0) respectively. Unlike the other disease category cardiovascular disease increased steeply over the past thirty years. Overall case fatality rate at MICU was 31.6% ranging from 24.8% of other-NCD to 46.7% of infectious diseases.
Conclusion: Cardiovascular disease has steeply increased till it became predominant in the last decade at MICU of TASH.