Trajectories of Short-Term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Patients with Post-Intensive Care Syndrome: A Longitudinal Observational Study.

Purpose: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a major psychiatric health issue among intensive care unit (ICU) survivors with post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). Although early PTSD intervention has been demonstrated to decrease the risk of progression from acute to chronic PTSD, information on the progression trajectory of short-term PTSD symptoms and modifiable risk factors in PICS patients is limited. This study aimed to explore the clinical progression trajectories of short-term PTSD symptoms and the associated factors in PICS patients by conducting a prospective longitudinal observational study.

Patients and methods: This study was conducted at a tertiary hospital in China. The impact of event scale-revised was used to collect data on the PTSD symptoms of patients at 1, 2, 3, and 4 months post-discharge from the ICU. The latent growth mixture model was used to construct trajectory models for PTSD symptoms and multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the factors associated with the trajectories.

Results: A total of 130 ICU survivors with PICS completed the 4-month short-term follow-up. Our results showed that PTSD symptoms in PICS patients manifested as three trajectories, namely, moderate chronic (n = 17, 13.1%), recovery (n = 25, 19.2%), and resilience (n = 88, 67.7%). Compared with the resilience trajectory, age and female were identified as risk factors for the moderate chronic trajectory, while prolonged ICU stay was a risk factor for the recovery trajectory.

Conclusion: Our study showed that short-term PTSD symptoms in PICS patients manifested as moderate chronic, recovery, and resilience trajectories. Additionally, our results showed that PTSD screening should be conducted for critically ill patients, especially younger, female, or long-term ICU patients, immediately after their discharge from the ICU.