Background & Objectives: Intensive care unit (ICU) is one of the most critical parts of the hospital. In other words the intensive care means taking care of patients suffering fram acute and life-threaning diseases by the most expert personnel, using modern equipment and facilities. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mortality rate of the patients admitted to ICU and the effective factors in at Ardabil Fatemi Hospital.

  Methods: This is descriptive-cross sectional study carried out on the patients admitted to surgical and neurosurgical ICU in Ardabil Fatemi Hosbital from June 2005 to June 2006. Among all the patients admitted to ICU (903 patients) who were under investigation, only those who died were included in the study. The effective factors were age, gender, previous sickne type of illness, complications, ventilator connection requirment. The information collected using the questionnaire and the data were analyzed with spss and chi square statistical programs.

  Results: From the total namber of 903 patients admitted to ICU 140 (15.5%) of them died. According to the information collected 72.8% of the cases were male and 27.2% were female. The age range of pateints was 10-80 years old. The mortality rate was high among the patients over 60 years old. The second one was 21-30 years old. The highest mortality rate was observed in the first five days of admission to the ICU 92.8% of these patients were being ventilated, 48.5% had a history of underlying diseases and 33.5% were afflicted with CNS trauma.

  Conclusion: Accordig to the findings, there was a significant relationship between traumatic patients and the mortality rate. The CNS trauma was the most prevalent factor of death in ICU. It is also noticeable that the mortality rate was higher in males and the old age group.