Self-Rated Health as a Predictor of Death after Two Years: The Importance of Physical and Mental Wellbeing Postintensive Care

Abstract EN

Introduction.

The objective of this study is, among half-year intensive care survivors, to determine whether self-assessment of health can predict two-year mortality.

Methods.

The study is a prospective cohort study based on the Procalcitonin and Survival Study trial.

Half-year survivors from this 1200-patient multicenter intensive care trial were sent the SF-36 questionnaire.

We used both a simple one-item question and multiple questions summarized as a Physical Component Summary (PCS) and a Mental Component Summary (MCS) score.

The responders were followed for vital status 730 days after inclusion.

Answers were dichotomized into a low-risk and a high-risk group and hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated by Cox proportional hazard analyses.

Conclusion.

We found that self-rated health measured by a single question was a strong independent predictor of two-year all-cause mortality (HR: 1.8; 95% CI: 1.1–3.0).

The multi-item component scores of the SF-36 also predicted two-year mortality (PCS: HR: 2.9; 95% CI 1.7–5.0) (MCS: HR: 1.9; 95% CI 1.1–3.4).

These results suggest that self-rated health questions could help in identifying patients at excess risk.

Randomized controlled trials are needed to test whether our findings represent causality.