PC3078: Incidence of New Morbidity Based on Functional Status Scale in Children on Discharge from Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of a Low Middle Income Country

Background: Mortality is no longer being considered a benchmark Quality Indicator (QI) in PICUs. Recently short-term outcome among survivors of PICU as assessed by Functional Status Scale (FSS) is becoming a QI. New morbidity was defined as an increase in FSS score of ≥ 3 points from baseline

Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on children (1 mo. -15 yrs.) who were discharged alive (stepped down) from PICU from November 2021 to January 2022. The functional status was evaluated by using FSS on first day of admission and at time of discharge from PICU to measure new acquired morbidity

Results: A total of 118 patients were included. The mean age was 4.6±3.2 yr. and 62.5% (71) were male. The mean PRISM score was 13.06±5.34. Most common diagnostic categories were acute respiratory illnesses (37.3%) and infectious diseases (28%). The mean FSS were 10.49±5.37 and 7.21±2.51 on admission and discharge respectively.
The incidence of new morbidity was 36.4% (43/118). On multivariate analysis, the morbidity was significantly associated with male gender (OR 2.38 [95%CI 1.06-5.38; p =0.041]) and PRISM III score >10 (OR 0.28[95% CI 0.089-0.89; p=0.035]). 90% (106) of patients survived and were discharge with good functional status whereas only two patients (1.6%) had severe and very dysfunctional status at time of discharge from PICU

Conclusion: Our results demonstrated high incidence of new morbidity (36.4%) compared to previous studies. However, most of patients (90%) were discharged from PICU in good functional status. Potentially male gender and high PRISM-III score (>10) were significantly associated with high incidence of morbidity in our PICU