Impairments Are Common in Long-term ALI Survivors

Cognitive and psychiatric impairments are common in long-term survivors of acute lung injury (ALI), according to a new study, and these impairments can be assessed using a telephone-based test battery.

“Neuropsychological impairment is increasingly being recognized as an important outcome among survivors of critical illness, but neuropsychological function in long-term ALI survivors has not been assessed in a multi-center trial, and evidence on the etiology of these impairments in ALI survivors is limited,” says lead author Mark E. Mikkelsen, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “To overcome the constraints of in-person assessment, we developed a telephone battery of standardized neuropsychological tests that could be administered by a non-expert and used it to assess a subset of 122 ALI survivors from the Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Clinical Trials Network Fluid and Catheter Treatment Trial.” For more information, click here to read the full release.