Respiratory and circulatory insufficiency during emergent long-distance critical care interhospital transports to tertiary care in a sparsely populated region: a retrospective analysis of late mortality risk.

Major impairment of oxygenation and/or major haemodynamic instability at the time of ICU transport to get to urgent tertiary intervention is strongly associated with increased mortality risk at 3 months in this cohort. These findings support the conclusion that these conditions are markers for many fold increase in risk for death notable already at 3 months after transport for patients with these conditions.