BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Searching the literature, we found no studies which correlate the NAS (Nursing Activities Score), who determines the real time of nursing evaluation and patient care, with mortality for prognostic index. The objectives this study were to know the values of the NAS score at ours service, try to find correlations between this values and the APACHE II index and to analyze the mortality rates with NAS scores. METHODS: This is a prospective ICU inpatient study from July to November/2005. Our data's of the APACHE II score were recorded from the QuaTI system study. Qui-square test or equivalent was done to compare the proportions. For the analyses we utilized the EPI-INFO-6 software. RESULTS: The sample was 148 patients, mean age of 55.5 years with 59.4% males. The mean hospitalization time were 9.1 days, mortality rate of 29.7%, mean NAS score of 51.5% and mean APACHE II score of 13.4. There were a positive correlation ship between NAS and APACHE II index (R = 0.82). Selecting only the patients with NAS more than 51 we found that 41 in 83 died and 42 in 83 survived. Those whose NAS were under 51, only 3 in 65 died and 62 in 65 survived (p < 0.005), identifying an statistically significant group. CONCLUSIONS: In this study the mean value of NAS were 51.5%. There were good correlation with the APACHE II index and we shown that the mortality rate was high in the higher NAS values.
Intensive Care Unit; Mortality; nursing; Severity of illness index
