Epidemiology of Chronic Pain as Part of the Post-intensive Care Syndrome

Post-intensive care syndrome is receiving growing interest because of the chronic health issues secondary to a critical care admission: neurocognitive impairment, motor sequelae, mood disturbances. These chronic health issues bear tremendous burden for patients and next-of-kin. Among these chronic health issues, chronic pain symptoms could have major consequences on the patient's quality of life. In the local single-center follow-up experience, 6 months after a patient's admission in the critical care unit, around 20% of patients displayed chronic pain symptoms. The investigators have addressed these patients to pain care specialists, with successful treatment success. However, the evaluation of pain symptoms remains simplistic; moreover, the incidence of chronic pain symptoms in patients after critical care unit admission, receives little attention in the literature although these symptoms may literally blunt out all other health issues. The incidence and type of chronic pain symptoms has been poorly described, to the best of knowledge. The aim of this study is to perform a multi-center nationwide epidemiologic study of chronic pain symptoms after a critical care unit admission. The investigators intend to describe the incidence of chronic pain assessed with a Simple Verbal Score ≥ 3, 3 months after the ICU admission. The investigators also intend to describe the incidence of painful symptoms, at ICU discharge as well as the type of pain symptoms (ie neuropathic pain) at discharge and at 3 months using the ID-Pain scale. The evaluation at 3 months will be performed during a physical follow-up or self-assessed by the patient. The investigators intend to explore the risk factors associated with chronic pain, as an exploratory analysis. The investigators are performing a nation-wide multicentric study. At this point 24 centers are participating to this study and the investigators expect to include 700 patients with a 3 months follow-up.