• Snigdha Jain, Ling Han, Evelyne A Gahbauer, Linda Leo-Summers, Shelli L Feder, Lauren E Ferrante, and Thomas M Gill.
• Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT.
• Crit. Care Med. 2024 Sep 18.

ObjectivesOlder adults who survive critical illness are at risk for increased disability, limiting their independence and quality of life. We sought to evaluate whether the occurrence of symptoms that restrict activity, that is, restricting symptoms, is associated with increased disability following an ICU hospitalization.DesignProspective longitudinal study of community-living adults 70 years old or older who were interviewed monthly between 1998 and 2018.SettingSouth Central Connecticut, United States.PatientsTwo hundred fifty-one ICU admissions from 202 participants who were discharged alive from the hospital.InterventionsNone.Measurements And Main ResultsOccurrence of 15 restricting symptoms (operationalized as number of symptoms and presence of ≥ 2 symptoms) and disability in activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, and mobility was ascertained during monthly interviews throughout the study period. We constructed multivariable Poisson regression models to evaluate the association between post-ICU restricting symptoms and subsequent disability over the 6 months following ICU hospitalization, adjusting for known risk factors for post-ICU disability including pre-ICU disability, frailty, cognitive impairment, mechanical ventilation, and ICU length of stay. The mean age of participants was 83.5 years (sd, 5.6 yr); 57% were female. Over the 6 months following ICU hospitalization, each unit increase in the number of restricting symptoms was associated with a 5% increase in the number of disabilities (adjusted rate ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.04-1.06). The presence of greater than or equal to 2 restricting symptoms was associated with a 29% greater number of disabilities over the 6 months following ICU hospitalization as compared with less than 2 symptoms (adjusted rate ratio, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.22-1.36).ConclusionsIn this longitudinal cohort of community-living older adults, symptoms restricting activity were independently associated with increased disability after ICU hospitalization. These findings suggest that management of restricting symptoms may enhance functional recovery among older ICU survivors.Copyright © 2024 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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