[Adverse event in elderly patients in intensive care unit].

This study aims to identify the scientific production in Latin America about the safety of aged people in the ICU and adverse events dealt in the literature. It is a systematic revision, with indexed key words. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were respected. Twenty papers were selected for analysis. Most of them were carried out after the year 2000, in Brazil, by professional nurses and physicians, dealing mostly with adverse events connected to mistakes with medicines, accidental remove of probes and catheters, nosocomial infections, errors in the procedure techniques and occurrence of pressure sores. In the selected papers there were no mentions to adverse events related to behavior changes. The scientific production about the theme is still recent in Latin America, tending to increase. Its necessary to increase the focus to the aged population in these units, taking into account the possible risk to which they are exposed.