Relationship of Age And Mobility Levels During Physical Rehabilitation With Clinical Outcomes in Critical Illness

Objective: To determine whether age, mobility level, and change in mobility level across the first 3 physical rehabilitation sessions associate with clinical outcomes of patients who are critically ill.

Design: Retrospective, observational cohort study.

Setting: Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU).

Participants: Hospitalized adults (n = 132) who received 3 or more, consecutive rehabilitation sessions in the MICU.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Measurements and main results: Sample included 132 patients with 60 (45%) classified as younger (18-59 years) and 72 (55%) as older (60+ years). The most common diagnosis was sepsis/septicemia (32.6%). Older relative to younger patients had a significantly slower rate of improvement in ICU Mobility Scale (IMS) scores across rehabilitation sessions (mean slope coefficient 0.3 vs 0.6 points, P<.001), were less likely to be discharged to home (30.6% vs 55.0%, P=.005), and were more likely to die within 12 months (41.7% vs 25.0%, P=.046). Covariate-adjusted models indicated greater early improvement in IMS scores were associated with discharge home (P=.005). Longer time to first rehabilitation session, lower initial IMS scores, and slower improvement in IMS scores were associated with increased ICU days (all P<.03).

Conclusion: Older age and not achieving the mobility milestone of sitting at edge of bed or limited progression of mobility across sessions is associated with poor patient outcomes. Our findings suggest that age and mobility level contribute to outcome prognostication, and can aide in clinical phenotyping and rehabilitative service allocation.