Background: Despite the growing palliative care movement, most admissions still occur in Intensive Care Units. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of palliative care patients admitted in an ICU and assessed their outcomes. Methods: This prospective study was conducted in a tertiary private hospital, in an adult medical-surgical ICU with 22-bed in São Paulo, Brazil. Patients or their family member with ICU stay ≥ 48 hours were invited to participate. They were excluded if they had no conditions to answer the questionnaire or if they refuse to participate. During ICU stay we analyzed through the medical records and questionnaire their clinical condition and their oncologic status. We called them by telephonic assessment to assess their survival. Results: From March 2011 to March 2013 a total of 576 ICU patients were analyzed; of these, 280 were oncologic patients and 95 were palliative care. Of total, the majority was male gender (57.8%), median age was 67[54-79] years, SAPS III score was 54±18.4 points, SOFA was 3.1±3.0 and ICU Length of stay (LOS) was 9.0±11.3 days. ICU mortality was 16.5%, 1-month mortality was 22% and 3-months cumulative mortality was 28.6%. We could observe that palliative care patients were in majority cancer patients (75%vs 43.4%,p<0.001), with metastatic disease(81.7 vs 36.3, p<0.001), had greater mean time of initial diagnosis(3.21±3.7 vs 2.17±2.5, p=0.009), had greater ICU LOS (14.2±16.2 days vs 7.96±9.8, p<0.001) greater mean SAPS III (68.5±16.0 vs p<0.001) and SOFA (4.81±3.2 vs 2.81±2.8, p<0.001) when compared with non palliative patients care. They also needed more mechanical ventilation (50.0%vs32.6%, p=0.001), tracheotomy (11.6%vs 5.0%,p=0.014) and vasopressors (54.7% vs 36.8,p=0.001). The ICU mortality was greater (32.6% vs 6.8%, p<0.001), 1-month (60.0% vs 14.0%, p<0.001) and 3-months (73.5% vs 19.1%). Conclusions: Palliative care suffers most in Intensive Care Unit and we observed a high mortality at 3-months after ICU discharge. We recommend more discussions before palliative care patient’s admissions in ICU to better provide them quality of life.