Regardless of the progress of medical technologies and techniques of contemporary cardiac surgery, a part of the patients entering the intensive care unit need prolonged intensive care. A lot of efforts related to the mobilization of human and financial resources are made for their survival. However, the information about their fate after being discharged from the hospital after successful treatment is insufficient or missing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of life and the survival of patients with prolonged intensive care unit length of stay one year after their cardiac surgery. One hundred and sixty-three patients participated in the study having an average age of 67.18 ± 10.36 years, ranging from 36 to 79 years, of whom 126 (77.3%) men and 37 (22.7%) women in proportion 3.4:1. A validated general questionnaire was used for the assessment of the quality of life – Nottingham Health Profile. Three thousand six hundred and nineteen patients were hospitalized in the intensive care unit during the period from 01.01.2013 till 31.12.2015. Three hundred and twenty-nine (8.9%) of them stayed for nine and more days in the Clinic of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care. Two hundred and eighteen patients were discharged from the clinic. One hundred and eleven (33.7%) is the number of the patients who died before their stay at the intensive care unit and 35 patients (16.09%) died before conducting the interviews. Sixty-eight percent of the patients find their condition acceptable and 48% think that they have improvement after the surgery. Most of them think that their full recovery occurred between 6 and 12 months after their discharge from clinic. The early (33.7%) and the late (16.8%) mortality of patients who had a prolonged stay in the intensive care unit after cardiac surgery is high. Patients who survived a year after cardiac surgeries have worse quality of life than those with a normal stay but they find their condition acceptable. In their estimation the recovery occurs between 6 and 12 months after their discharge from the hospital.
Key words: intensive care, cardiac surgeries, prolonged stay, quality of life, Nottingham Health Profile
Topic: MEDICINE