Health-related quality of life and participation after inpatient rehabilitation of sepsis survivors with severe sequelae: a cohort study.
Ulf Bodechtel, Thea Koch, Lars Heubner and 3 others
PMID 38956963WHAT IT FOUND
Three months after intensive rehab, 69% of severe sepsis survivors lived at home.
They reported moderate quality of life and participation. Younger patients with stronger legs and earlier walking ability had better outcomes.
Key findings
01Three months after discharge from rehabilitation, 69% of the analysed patients were living at home, either with or without care.
02Health-related quality of life was moderate, with a mean EQ-5D score of 0.64 on a scale from 0 to 1.
03Social participation was also moderate, with a mean RNLI score of 54.98 on a scale from 0 to 100.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
No control group was used, so improvements cannot be definitively attributed to the specific rehabilitation pathway. High attrition and mortality: of the initial 100 patients, 19 died and 18 were transferred elsewhere, leaving 55 for analysis. This may bias results toward survivors with better prognoses. Single-centre study in Germany, which may limit generalisability to other healthcare systems. The EQ-5D may not fully capture the specific experiences of sepsis survivors, as it was developed for the general population.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by the Kurt Goldstein Institut and the TU Dresden publication fund.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this specific rehabilitation pathway caused the outcomes. The study had no control group, so we cannot know if patients would have achieved similar quality of life or participation with standard care or in a different setting.