The Effectiveness of a Post-ICU Recovery Program on Relatives

Relatives of intensive care patients are affected of critical illness with symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder resulting in impaired mental health. Recovery programs aimed at patients after a stay at the intensive care unit (ICU) have been tested and implemented, but the effectiveness is inconclusive, and on relatives sparse. The aim is to determine whether relatives to former intensive care patients benefits from a recovery programme with improved health-related quality of life (HRQOL), Sense Of Coherence (SOC), and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD compared to standard care during the first year after ICU discharge. This was a sub-study of the "Recovery and Aftercare in Post-Intensive care Therapy patients" (RAPIT) trial; a pragmatic, non-blinded, multicentre, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial. We recruited patients and relatives concurrently during the RAPIT-trial study-period, and now we are doing analysis on relatives. We wants to include adult relatives defined by the patients from 10 Danish ICUs. The study was powered to detect an effect size of a 5-point increase in the Medical Health Survey Short-Form 36 (SF-36) on the mental component score (MCS) in the intervention group at 12 months post-ICU. Power calculation was based on an expected distribution of MCS from a matched population with a mean of 36.7 (SD 11.7) from a similar study. With a statistical power of 80% and significance level of 0.05, we estimated that 86 relatives were needed in each group to complete follow-up. The statistical analysis plan was based on intention-to-treat (ITT) as was per protocol (PP) analysis and investigating difference between intervention and controls. Relatives were considered to have received the intervention if the patient attended at least one of the three consultations, which accounted for the PP analysis.