Predictors of neurocognitive and psychological disorders in children after intensive care admission: A prospective cohort study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Children admitted in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) often deal with long‐term morbidities affecting physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and psychiatric symptoms. We aimed to identify the internal and external factors which predict the occurrence of neurocognitive and psychological disorders in survivors at 3 months after PICU discharge. METHODS: We identified 53 critically ill children, ages 4–18 years old, admitted in PICU for more than 24 h, and survived. We evaluated neurocognitive disorder with Pediatric Cerebral Perfomance Category (PCPC) and psychological disorders with Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) at the time of PICU discharge and repeated in 3 months afterward. We evaluated the internal and external risk factors related to neurocognitive and psychological disorders in PICU survivors. The internal risk factors were age, gender, family composition, and socioeconomic status. The external risk factors were: surgical intervention, neurological disease, predicted death rate by pediatric index mortality (PIM)‐2 score, PICU length of stay (LOS), days of mechanical ventilation, and the number of therapeutic interventions. RESULTS: There were significant improvement in neurocognitive disorders (p < 0.001), peer problems, (p = 0.01), and prosocial behaviors (p = 0.00) in children at 3 months after the PICU discharge. Age of 4–5 years has a significant effect on neurocognitive disorders (p = 0.04), while male gender (p = 0.02), low‐social economy, non‐intact family composition (p = 0.01), neurological disease (p = 0.04), surgical intervention (p = 0.01), and TISS score (p = 0.00) have a significant effect on psychological disorders in children at 3 months after the PICU discharge CONCLUSION: Neurocognitive disorders, peer problems, and prosocial behaviors improved in a few patients 3 months after PICU discharge. Age of 4–5 years was a risk factor of the persisted neurocognitive disorder, whereas male gender, low‐social economy, non‐intact family composition, neurological disease, surgical intervention, and TISS score were risk factors of persisted psychological disorder at 3 months after PICU.