The majority of patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems, scientists claim.
Seven in ten ICU survivors end up with post intensive care syndrome, which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation.
The findings, based on 1,300 people, are the first from an ongoing five-year study across hospitals in the Netherlands.
The study comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused a surge in the number of people being treated in intensive care.
Researchers said their findings are likely to apply to critically-ill COVID-19 patients, who can spend weeks in hospital battling the killer infection.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent three nights in intensive care in a central London hospital before he was discharged at the weekend.
The findings follow Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s discharge from St Thomas’s Hospital, after spending three nights fighting for his life in intensive care. Yesterday, Johnson said he had left hospital ‘after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question’
The MONITOR-IC is a large study which started in 2016 – three years before COVID-19 began spreading in China last December.
Some 6,000 patients have been enrolled so far. Another 6,000 will be involved in the next step, some of whom will have COVID-19.
The first findings, published in the Journal of Critical Care, were based on results of 1,300 patients who were followed for one year after ICU admission.
Data was collected in face-to-face interviews and questionnaires that patients and their families fill out when they are first admitted to ICU, and again five years later.
Seven in ten patients complained of moderate to severe consequences in the year after their ICU experience, The Times reports.
That included 25 per cent of planned ICU patients, due to elective surgery for example, and 42 per cent of unplanned patients, who had been taken in to IC due to incidents like an infection, heart attack or accident.
The term frail relates to mobility, weakness, muscle mass and cognitive function. It’s often referred to as post intensive care syndrome.
The syndrome also covers a long list of mental symptoms, ranging from difficulty concentrating, fear and anxiety, and trouble problem solving.
The NHS says lingering problems from ICU can last ‘several months’. These can include weakness and stiffness, loss of appetite, sleep and mental problems, like being forgetful.
It’s the result of a combination of medications used in ICU, which can fog the brain, the medical conditions themselves, and exposure to a life or death situation.
Physically, a survivor may be frail or be fatigued more often, normally because they have lost muscle mass while being cared for.
Patients needing intensive care can also have underlying health conditions, which may be exacerbated by their hospital stay.
‘We see that patients still have moderate to severe complaints after a year,’ says Mark van den Boogaard, lead-author of the Radboud University Medical Center study.
The team noted that 26 per cent of patients were already regarded as frail when they went into ICU. They spent an average of four to five days in intensive care.
‘But we see clear differences in the severity of the residual complaints between people who are in IC for one or two days after surgery and emergencies that are between four and seven or eight days,’ Mr Van den Boogaard said.
‘The latter group of patients is much more troubled by all kinds of complaints.’
Coronavirus victims are in hospital for around six days before their death, a study published in the British Medical Journal found.
It’s a little more for those who recover and are discharged. They spend between two and three weeks in hospital, and many will be in intensive care during that period.
‘It seems obvious to me that COVID-19 patients will suffer from all kinds of residual complaints because they have been in IC for so long,’ said Mr Van den Boogaard.
‘That’s a logical assumption based on the data we have now, but it still needs to be proven that it is.’
Health chiefs fear 7.9million people will need hospitalisation for the coronavirus in the next year alone.
A document from Public Health England said: ‘As many as 80 per cent of the population are expected to be infected with COVID-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15 per cent (7.9m people) may require hospitalisation.’
The findings come as Boris Johnson spends his first day in the comfort of his country home in Buckinghamshire after a stint in intensive care with the coronavirus.
He was taken to St Thomas’ in London on Sunday April 5 – ten days after testing positive for the coronavirus – and was moved to intensive care on the Monday.
He spent three nights receiving round-the-clock care before being moved onto a normal hospital ward on Thursday night.
Yesterday, Mr Johnson said he had left hospital ‘after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question’.
Despite being out of hospital, he won’t immediately return to his duties, No10 confirmed.
Experts say he will face between one and two months off work even if he makes a full recovery because he will be physically drained from fighting the virus.
A ‘period of inactivity’ in intensive care would result in the Prime Minister suffering a significant loss of muscle mass and strength.
Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia said: ‘I would expect most people who were that ill, to need at least a month or possibly two to be sufficiently back and to be able to function.’
Professor Mike Grocott a consultant in critical care medicine at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and vice president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists said: ‘On average a person who spends a while in intensive care on oxygen therapy alone, but basically immobile, would have a decrease in physical function for a period of time, that was likely to extend into weeks.
‘A period of inactivity will have an effect on physical function, typically characterised by a loss in muscle mass and strength.
‘It depends on how bad the duration and magnitude of illness was and it also depends on the quality and amount of time invested in rehabilitation.
‘We underestimate the value of just getting up and walking around and activity in normal life.’