Elderly ICU care and quality of life

#qualitysummit The Health Care Quality Summit in Saskatoon has full round of expert speakers, break-out sessions with "Saskatchewan Stories," but also a poster session showing some recent research in the field.  An anaesthesia and critical care fourth year resident named Adam van der Merwe (seen here) was interested in questions surrounding the efficacy of care in intensive care units.  But instead of focusing on the medical care, per se, he looked into the issue of the extent to which ICU care affected the patients' quality of life after their hospitalization.

In this chart, he compares various quality of life indicators for a control group representing the general population of Canada with elderly people who had visits to the ICUs.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the patient group shows markedly lower level of quality of life indicators after hospitalization.  Adam concludes, "The domains most affected are role limitations due to emotional and physical problems which impact independent living.  Low physical functioning scores also indicate that basic things like bathing and dressing might be a concern."