• Joanne McPeake, Tara Quasim, Philip Henderson, Alastair H Leyland, Nazir I Lone, Matthew Walters, Theodore J Iwashyna, and Martin Shaw.
• Intensive Care Unit, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, Scotland; MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland. Electronic address: Joanne.mcpeake@glasgow.ac.uk.
• Chest. 2021 Nov 1; 160 (5): 1681-1692.

BackgroundSurvivors of critical illness have poor long-term outcomes with subsequent increases in health care utilization. Less is known about the interplay between multimorbidity and long-term outcomes.Research QuestionHow do baseline patient demographics impact mortality and health care utilization in the year after discharge from critical care?Study Design And MethodsUsing data from a prospectively collected cohort, we used propensity score matching to assess differences in outcomes between patients with a critical care encounter and patients admitted to the hospital without critical care. Long-term mortality was examined via nationally linked data as was hospital resource use in the year after hospital discharge. The cause of death was also examined.ResultsThis analysis included 3,112 participants. There was no difference in long-term mortality between the critical care and hospital cohorts (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.90-1.32; P = .39). Prehospitalization emotional health issues (eg, clinical diagnosis of depression) were associated with increased long-term mortality (hazard ratio, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.14-1.96; P < .004). Health care utilization was different between the two cohorts in the year after discharge with the critical care cohort experiencing a 29% increased risk of hospital readmission (OR, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.11-1.50; P = .001).InterpretationThis national cohort study has demonstrated increased resource use for critical care survivors in the year after discharge but fails to replicate past findings of increased longer-term mortality. Multimorbidity, lifestyle factors, and socioeconomic status appear to influence long-term outcomes and should be the focus of future research.Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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