Mental health-related quality of life is related to delirium in intensive care patients

PURPOSE: Delirium during intensive care unit (ICU) stay may be related to premorbid mental illness. In addition, delirium during ICU stay may also negatively affect long-term health-related quality of life. The aim of our study was to investigate if delirium in the ICU is related to premorbid mental quality of life and affects long-term mental quality of life after ICU stay. METHODS: We performed a prospective cohort study in 1021 patients admitted for longer than 48 h in a medical-surgical ICU. We evaluated mental and physical quality of life using the Short-form-12 before ICU admission, at hospital discharge, and 3, 6 and 12 months after hospital discharge. Mixed model and logistic regression models were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Patients who experienced a delirium during ICU stay reported a worse pre-admission mental quality of life than those without delirium (p < 0.001). Furthermore, patients who suffered from delirium during their ICU stay exhibited a significant decrease in mental quality of life over time relative to patients without delirium (p = 0.035). CONCLUSION: In this large follow-up study, we demonstrated that ICU survivors who experienced a delirium during ICU stay reported a significantly worse pre-admission mental health-related quality of life and a significant decrease in mental health-related quality of life in the year after hospital discharge compared with patients without delirium