ObjectiveTo analyze the trend of disease spectrum and main diagnosis and therapeutic technologies in respiratory intensive care unit (RICU) in recent years, and find out the trend of change of patient’s characteristics and commonly used interventions in order to provide evidence for planning discipline development and improving personnel training program.MethodsPatients information and main diagnosis and therapeutic technologies of 1503 inpatients in RICU of Shenzhen People's Hospital from January, 2017 to December, 2020 were collected. The changes of disease spectrum and diagnosis and treatment technologies in different years were compared and analyzed.ResultsAmong all the patients, 66.3% were directly admitted into RICU, 12.1% were transferred from respiratory department, and 21.6% were transferred from other departments. The proportion of patients with non-respiratory diseases as principal diagnosis had an increasing trend, from 18.8% in 2017 to 37.3% in 2020 (P<0.05). The diseases with most obvious increasing trend were sepsis, nervous system diseases, circulatory system diseases and extra-pulmonary malignancies (P<0.05). The use of respiratory related diagnosis and therapeutic technologies was gradually increasing, meanwhile, the use of non-traditional respiratory related technologies, especially continuous renal replacement therapy, was also increasing. There was no significant difference in fatality rate among different years (P>0.05).ConclusionsThe number of patients with extra-pulmonary diseases and the use of non-traditional respiratory related diagnosis and therapeutic technologies in RICU were increasing. The development of RICU and the allocation of technical personnel needed to be improved accordingly.