Purpose: The goal of this study was to describe long-term survival and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), measured by EQ-6D, in a general intensive care unit (ICU) population.
Materials and methods: We included 5934 consecutive adult patients admitted to a mixed-population ICU. There were no exclusion criteria. One-year survival status was determined using the Dutch municipal population register. Subsequently, all survivors received the EuroQoL EQ-6D-3L questionnaire. The primary outcome was overall HRQoL and survival of the ICU survivors, compared to overall QoL of an age- and sex-matched reference population.
Results: A total of 5138 patients (86.6%) survived until hospital discharge, with 4647 (78.3%) patients surviving the 1-year of follow-up. The EuroQoL questionnaire was sent to 4465 survivors and returned by 3034 (68.0%) of 4465. The median HRQoL in surviving patients was 0.83 (interquartile range [IQR], 0.64-1.00) vs 0.86 (IQR, 0.85-0.86) in the reference population (P < .001). There was marked variation across admission diagnosis groups: cardiac surgery patients had an HRQoL of 0.94 (IQR, 0.74-1.00), whereas patients admitted with chronic renal failure had an HRQoL of 0.65 (IQR, 0.47-0.83).
Conclusions: One year after ICU admission, HRQoL was significantly lower than in the reference population. Notably, marked variations were found across subgroups.
Keywords: Critical care; EuroQoL; Health-related quality of life; Intensive care; Long term; Quality of life.
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