Why the study?
The study aimed to understand the impact of critical care admission on long-term outcomes compared with hospitalised patients without critical care, and to examine interrelationships between emotional, physical, and social recovery problems.
Does critical care hospital admission worsen long-term emotional, physical, and social outcomes compared to non-critical care hospitalisation?
Does critical care hospital admission worsen long-term emotional, physical, and social outcomes compared to non-critical care hospitalisation?
Survivors of critical illness experience significantly worse long-term emotional and social outcomes compared to matched hospitalized patients who did not require critical care.
Critical care survivors face higher depression, isolation, and welfare needs; supports targeted recovery programs while leaving causal pathways open for trials.
Background This study aimed to understand the impact of a critical care admission on long-term outcomes, compared to other hospitalised patients without a critical care encounter. A secondary aim was to examine the interrelationship between emotional, physical, and social problems during recovery. Methods We utilised data from the UK Biobank , an on-going, prospective population-based cohort study . We employed propensity score matching to assess differences in outcomes between patients with a critical care encounter and patients admitted to the hospital (first admission to hospital available) without critical care. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse emotional, physical and social outcomes following critical illness and the relationships between these health domains. Findings Data from 1,618 patients were analysed. The median time to follow-up in the critical care cohort was 4427 days (IQR:788–6146) vs 4516 days (IQR: 811–6369) in the non-critical care, hospitalised cohort. Across the two time periods assessed (pre and post 2000), patients exposed to critical care were more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression ( p < 0.01) and social isolation ( p = 0.01) following discharge from hospital. The critical care cohort were also more likely to have social problems such as the requirement for government funded welfare support ( p = 0.02). In the critical care cohort, social and emotional health were closely correlated ( p < 0.001, 95% CI:0.33–0.54). The nature of physical problems changed over time; pre-2000 there was a significant difference between the critical and non-critical care in physical outcomes following discharge from hospital, however, there was no difference detected between the two cohorts post-2000. Interpretation This cohort study has demonstrated that survivors of critical illness have different psycho-social outcomes to matched patients, hospitalised without a critical care encounter. Funding JM is funded by a THIS.Institute (University of Cambridge) Research Fellowship (PD-2019–02–16). AHL is part of the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, funded by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12017/13) and the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU13).
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McPeake et al. (2021) studied this question.
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