Recovery after prolonged ICU treatment in patients with COVID-19

Abstract

With millions of individuals contracting COVID-19 worldwide, an unprecedented number of intensive care unit (ICU) survivors are now in recovery.1 There is an urgent need to understand more fully the consequences of COVID-19 critical illness to prioritise patient-centred and family-centred interventions to meet their post-ICU physical and mental health needs. However, achieving advances in understanding to provide optimum care after acute disease remains challenging, with a paucity of post-COVID-19 long-term outcome data, and little understanding of the intersection between the direct consequences of COVID-19 (currently identified under the term post-COVID-19 condition) and the complex consequences of critical illness (post-intensive care syndrome or PICS).