Abstract
Data continue to emerge demonstrating the poor quality of life of ICU survivors in the months and years following critical illness. In this issue of Critical Care, Cuthbertson and colleagues present new data on quality of life from a cohort of ICU survivors who were followed for 5 years. They found that survivors had poor physical quality of life and low quality adjusted life-years in comparison to age-adjusted norms, describing the long-term impact of critical illness as similar to a co-morbidity. Studies are now needed that seek to identify potentially modifiable factors both during and following an ICU admission to allow for eventual improvement in long-term morbidity. Such studies will likely need to incorporate extensive planning for data collection, as well as coordinated linkage with other available datasets that include substantial amounts of patient information from outside of the ICU.
Highlights
Data continue to emerge demonstrating the poor quality of life of ICU survivors in the months and years following critical illness
Over the past 10 years we have learned that some ICU patients remain at elevated risk for many problems in the months following critical illness
These problems may occur in the first few months, or even the first year after a critical illness, but what about in the longer-term? In this issue of Critical Care, Cuthbertson and colleagues [1] provide data from an ambitious single-center study in Scotland that followed critical care survivors for 5 years, measuring physical and mental quality of life at various time-points
Summary
Data continue to emerge demonstrating the poor quality of life of ICU survivors in the months and years following critical illness. Over the past 10 years we have learned that some ICU patients remain at elevated risk for many problems in the months following critical illness. These problems may occur in the first few months, or even the first year after a critical illness, but what about in the longer-term?
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