Intensive care has saved many lives but there are still those patients who are so ill at the time of presentation that the benefit of escalating intensive care support is not clear-cut. To be fair to these patients and the others who can benefit from our services, it is vital that decisions concerning how far organ supporting measures should be pursued are made as reliably and robustly as possible. This review describes some of the prognostic features available at presentation or shortly afterwards, pertaining to five clinical scenarios associated with a perceived poor survival rate (ie, acute-on-chronic liver failure, haematological malignancy, chronic lung disease, cardiac arrest and morbid obesity).
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