Three epidemiologic studies investigated the outcomes of postsurgical patients admitted to the ICU. Analysing the data for 88,504 patients collected from several Austrian ICUs over a period of 11 years, Rhodes et al. [15] found that pre-existing morbidities such as chronic renal disease, respiratory or cardiac failure, cirrhosis, alcoholism, acute kidney injury or nonmetastatic cancer significantly impaired outcome. Independent from those risks, reason for admission, urgency of operation, age and SAPS II score turned out to be major factors associated with hospital mortality. An interesting observation was the fact that survival had improved over the investigated period of 11 years.