The impact of admission to a pediatric intensive care unit assessed by means of global and cognitive performance scales.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the impact of admission to the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil on children's cognitive and global performance.

METHODS

An observational, longitudinal study of a sequential sample of critically ill children. The following indicators were used: the Pediatric Index of Mortality (PIM), for severity and risk of death at admission, the Pediatric Cerebral Performance Category (PCPC), for cognitive morbidity and the Pediatric Overall Performance Category (POPC), for global morbidity, at admission and at discharge. Morbidity related to the ICU was measured according to the difference between classifications at discharge and at admission (delta scores). The Kruskal-Wallis test was applied.

RESULTS

A total of 443 patients were assessed, 54% of whom were male, with a median age of 12 months (IQ 4-45), and a median ICU stay of 4.24 days (IQ 2.4-8). The mortality rate was 6.3%. The median PIM score was 2.36% (IQ 1-7). On admission, 46% of the patients had some degree of cognitive morbidity and 66% had some degree of global morbidity. At discharge there was 60% cognitive morbidity and 86% global morbidity. The assessment of ICU-related morbidity revealed that 25% of the patients had undergone cognitive changes while 41% had undergone global variations, at discharge compared with admission.

CONCLUSIONS

Although affected by the elevated degree of morbidity at admission, the impact of the ICU stay was more significant in the global than in the cognitive domain. In the same manner, both risk of death at admission and length of stay had a significant effect on the morbidity of severely ill patients.