You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 73, Issue 2
  • Return to work and lost earnings after acute respiratory distress syndrome: a 5-year prospective, longitudinal study of long-term survivors

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Critical care
Original Article
Return to work and lost earnings after acute respiratory distress syndrome: a 5-year prospective, longitudinal study of long-term survivors
  1. Biren B Kamdar1,
  2. Kristin A Sepulveda2,3,
  3. Alexandra Chong4,
  4. Robert K Lord5,
  5. Victor D Dinglas2,3,
  6. Pedro A Mendez-Tellez2,6,
  7. Carl Shanholtz7,
  8. Elizabeth Colantuoni2,8,
  9. Till M von Wachter9,
  10. Peter J Pronovost2,6,10,
  11. Dale M Needham2,3,11
  1. 1Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
  2. 2Outcomes After Critical Illness and Surgery (OACIS) Group, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  3. 3Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  4. 4Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
  5. 5School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  6. 6Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  7. 7Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  8. 8Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  9. 9Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
  10. 10Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  11. 11Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Biren B Kamdar, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 10833 Le Conte Ave., Room 37-131 CHS, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; bkamdar{at}mednet.ucla.edu

Abstract

Background Delayed return to work is common after acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), but has undergone little detailed evaluation. We examined factors associated with the timing of return to work after ARDS, along with lost earnings and shifts in healthcare coverage.

Methods Five-year, multisite prospective, longitudinal cohort study of 138 2-year ARDS survivors hospitalised between 2004 and 2007. Employment and healthcare coverage were collected via structured interview. Predictors of time to return to work were evaluated using Fine and Grey regression analysis. Lost earnings were estimated using Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Results Sixty-seven (49%) of the 138 2-year survivors were employed prior to ARDS. Among 64 5-year survivors, 20 (31%) never returned to work across 5-year follow-up. Predictors of delayed return to work (HR (95% CI)) included baseline Charlson Comorbidity Index (0.77 (0.59 to 0.99) per point; p=0.04), mechanical ventilation duration (0.67 (0.55 to 0.82) per day up to 5 days; p<0.001) and discharge to a healthcare facility (0.49 (0.26 to 0.93); p=0.03). Forty-nine of 64 (77%) 5-year survivors incurred lost earnings, with average (SD) losses ranging from US$38 354 (21,533) to US$43 510 (25,753) per person per year. Jobless, non-retired survivors experienced a 33% decrease in private health insurance and concomitant 37% rise in government-funded coverage.

Conclusions Across 5-year follow-up, nearly one-third of previously employed ARDS survivors never returned to work. Delayed return to work was associated with patient-related and intensive care unit/hospital-related factors, substantial lost earnings and a marked rise in government-funded healthcare coverage. These important consequences emphasise the need to design and evaluate vocation-based interventions to assist ARDS survivors return to work.

  • return to work
  • acute respiratory distress syndrome
  • critical illness
  • employment
  • intensive care unit
  • ARDS
  • salary
  • health insurance

https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2017-210217

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors DMN and BBK: contributed to conception and design of the manuscript; are responsible for the overall content as guarantors; and affirm that the manuscript is an honest, accurate and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained. BBK, KAS, RKL, VDD, EC, TMvW and DMN: contributed to analysis and interpretation of data. BBK: drafted the manuscript and all other authors critically revised it for important intellectual content. All authors: gave final approval of the manuscript version to be published.

    • Funding BBK is supported by a grant through the UCLA Clinical Translational Research Institute (CTSI) and the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1TR000124&UL1TR001881). This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (P050HL73994, R01HL088045, and K24HL088551), along with the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) (UL1 TR 000424)06).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval The University’s Institutional Review Boards of all participating sites approved this study.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Correction notice This article has been corrected since it was published Online First. The ’Trial registration number' has been removed from the abstract. This is an observational study and not linked to a clinical trial.