Health and Quality of Life Outcomes BioMed Central Research Open Access Changes in health-related quality of life from 6 months to 2 years after discharge from intensive care Reidar Kvale* and Hans Flaatten Address: Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Haukeland University Hospital, N-5021 Bergen, Norway Email: Reidar Kvale* - ; Hans Flaatten - * Corresponding author Published: 24 March 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003, 1:2 This article is available from: Received: 28 February 2003 Accepted: 24 March 2003 © 2003 Kvale and Flaatten; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in. | BioMed Central Health and Quality of Life Outcomes Research Open Access Changes in health-related quality of life from 6 months to 2 years after discharge from intensive care Reidar Kvale and Hans Flaatten Address Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Haukeland University Hospital N-5021 Bergen Norway Email Reidar Kvale - Hans Flaatten - Corresponding author Published 24 March 2003 Received 28 February 2003 Accepted 24 March 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003 1 2 r This article is available from http content 1 1 2 2003 Kvale and Flaatten licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose provided this notice is preserved along with the article s original URL. Abstract Background Intensive care patients have both before and after the ICU stay a health-related quality of life HRQOL that differs from that of the normal population. Studies have described changes in HRQOL in the period from before the ICU stay and up to 12 months after. The aim of this study was to investigate possible longitudinal changes in HRQOL in adult patients 18 years from 6 months to 2 years after discharge from a general mixed intensive care unit ICU in a university hospital. Methods This is a prospective cohort study. Follow-up patients were found using the ICU database and the Peoples Registry. HRQOL was measured with the Short Form 36 SF-36 questionnaire. Answers at 6 months and 2 years were compared for all patients surgical and medical patients and different admission cohorts. Differences are presented with 95 confidence intervals. The SF-36 data were scored according to designed equations. SPSS was used to perform t-tests and Mann-Whitney tests. Results A total of 100 patients 26 medical and 74 surgical answered the SF-36 after 6 months and again after 2 years. There was overall moderate .
