Children’s Self-Reported Quality of Life After Intensive Care Treatment*

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: A number of studies have reported on parental/clinician reports of children's quality of life after intensive care treatment. The aim of this study was to establish children's own views of their outcome. [corrected]. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. [corrected]. SETTING: Twenty-one bed PICU in a tertiary Children's Hospital. PATIENTS: Ninety-seven children aged over 7 yr, with no preexisting learning difficulties, consecutively admitted to PICU over an 18 month period INTERVENTIONS: Patients completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory and a post-traumatic stress screener, at 3 months and again at 1 year (n = 72) after discharge from PICU. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: At 3 months post-discharge, the mean total Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory score reported by the PICU group was lower than that reported in the literature for a non-clinical community sample (PICU mean = 79.1 vs community mean = 83.9, p = 0.003), but by 1 year, they were comparable (82.2, p = 0.388). The mean physical functioning subscale score remained lower (PICU mean=81.6 vs. community mean=88.5, p = 0.01), but improved significantly from 73.4 at 3 months (p = 0.001).Sub-group analyses revealed that the elective group reported higher emotional functioning than the community sample (91.0, p=0.005 at 3 months and 88.2, p = 0.038 at 1 year vs community mean=78.5), and made significant gains in social functioning between timepoints (79.1 to 91.4, p = 0.015).Finally, although total PedsQL scores at 1 year were not associated with measures of severity of illness during admission, they were significantly negatively associated with concurrent post-traumatic stress symptom scores (r = -0.40, p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The self-report version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory proved to be a feasible and sensitive tool for assessing health related quality of life in this group of PICU survivors.