Table 2

Situation regarding respiratory intensive care units (RICUs) in some European countries

Country	No. of RICUs	No. of RICU beds	Monitoring systems	Patients	RT service	Nurse: patient ratio	Location	Government acknowledgement
Spain	1 + several NRCU	8	Invasive and non-invasive	All	No	1:2	Inside pn.	Yes
Slovenia	2	12	Invasive and non-invasive	All	?	1:2	Inside pn.	Yes
Greece	2	15	Non-invasive	ACRF	?	1:3	Inside pn.	Yes
Switzerland	4^*	20	Invasive and non-invasive	All	?	1:2	Outside pn.	No
Turkey	8	53	Non-invasive	ACRF	Some	1:2–1:3	Inside pn.	Yes
Denmark	2^†	10–15	Non-invasive	ACRF	Yes	—	Inside pn.	—
UK	10^†	>50	Non-invasive	ACRF	Some	—	Inside pn.	—
Italy	22^†	143	Non-invasive	ACRF	14 units	1:3–1:4	Inside pn.	Only 2
France	16 + several NRCU	170	Mainly invasive	All	Yes	1:2	Mainly inside pn.	Yes
Germany	15	70	Non-invasive or invasive (2 units)	ACRF and all in 2 units	Some	1:3–1:4	Inside or outside pn.	No
Holland	6^§	50	Invasive	All	Some	1:2	Inside or outside pn.	—

All = including respiratory patients to be admitted to ICU (table 1); ACRF = including patients to be admitted to NRCU or HDU only (table 1); RT = autonomous respiratory therapist service; inside pn = inside a Pneumology division; outside pn = outside the Pneumology division; ^* in some university hospitals the ICUs are divided “unofficially” into general and respiratory units;^†including “multiorgan” high dependency units; ^§two of six run by pneumologists only.