Extended Physiotherapy After Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Stay

Stockholm South General Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Disability; Critical Illness

Treatments: Other: Extended physiotherapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05349994

Improvement project AFE

Details and patient eligibility

About

Patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are at great risk of muscle atrophy and neuromuscular complications, that could lead to respiratory complications, decreased physical functioning and deteriorated health related quality of life. The objective is to investigate if extended physical therapy in a general ward could lead to increased physical functioning for post-ICU patients.The study hypothesis is that extended physical therapy would lead to increased physical function at hospital discharge compared to standard amount of physical therapy.

Full description

The study design is a before and after study. A control group was included for three months and received standard amount of physical therapy at surgical wards, corresponding to 1.75 employment. An intervention group was then included for six months and received extended amount of physical therapy corresponding to an extra 0.5 employment for study participants (2-4 patients/day). The primary outcome was physical function measured with the Chelsea Critical Care Physical Assessment Tool (CPAx), in the ICU and the surgical ward.

Enrollment: 44 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age over 18 years
• ICU stay >48 hours
• Understand the Swedish language

Exclusion criteria

• Patients palliative care with no intention of rehabilitation

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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44 participants in 2 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Standard amount of physical therapy at surgical wards in an urban hospital, corresponding to 1.75 physiotherapy employment on weekdays divided on four wards with a total of approx. 40-48 patients.

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Extended physiotherapy with an extra 0.5 employment on weekdays, leading to 1-2 physiotherapy session per day for the study participants in the intervention group.

Treatment:

Other: Extended physiotherapy