Dr. Hannah Wunsch of Columbia University in NYC and Dr. Derek Angus of the University of Pittsburgh are lead authors of the article "Variation in critical care services across North America and Western Europe" published in the October issue of Critical Care Medicine.  Eight countries in North America and Europe (United States, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain) provided information on their critical care services. ICU admission data and mortality in the eight countries were analyzed. Interestingly, Germany had the greatest number of both hospital beds at 593/100,000 population and ICU beds with 24/100,000. The number of ICU beds per capita did not strongly correlate with overall health care expenditure but did correlate strongly with mortality. It is concluded that critical care services vary dramatically among countries, with wide differences in both numbers of beds and volume of admissions.