To the best of our knowledge, this is the first planned prospective study looking at the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with cancer requiring non-elective admission to the ICU in the Middle East region. We estimated that up to 50 % of critically ill patients admitted to ICU services at AUBMC are cancer patients.Most studies about cancer patients admitted to the ICU are retrospective in nature with only a few that are prospective. Furthermore data about survival rates among cancer patients admitted to ICU and the prognostic factors that affect their mortality during ICU are inconsistent.

Cancer is considered as a terminal illness which makes identifying cancer patients who would benefit from ICU admission challenging. The decision for ICU admission need to be made without making futile efforts that might only increase survival by few days.

There is conflicting information about the prognostic factors that influence outcomes in cancer patients admitted to ICU. Two different studies about the validity of APACHE II Illness score in predicting outcomes of critically cancer patients admitted to ICU showed different results. For example Staudinger and his colleagues in their retrospective study did not validate APACHE II system scoring to be used alone to predict outcomes  while another two studies considered APACHE II score as a good predictive of hospital mortality.

All these facts dictate the urgent need of a prospective study that examine the survival rates and prognostic factors of cancer patients admitted to intensive care units.

In this study the subjects who will be recruited are all adult patients (≥18 years old) with a definitive diagnosis of hematological or solid malignancy, and who required non-elective admission to the intensive care units (ICU) at AUBMC.

Our research team will have access to the ICU daily log of patients to identify eligible patients for the study. All adult patients (≥18 years old) with a definitive diagnosis of hematological or solid malignancy, who required non-elective admission to the intensive care units (ICU) at AUBMC will be evaluated. Cancer patients electively admitted to ICU for monitoring following a surgical procedure or those being considered in cancer remission for more than 5 years will be excluded from the study.