Safety and Efficacy of an Early Rehabilitation Program in Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Due to the complications like intensive care unit-acquired weakness, critical illness polyneuropathy and neuropsychiatric disease of critical care, many organizations focus on rehabilitation in critically ill patients' management. Despite the good outcomes from papers, there are debatable issues of method, safety and efficacy of rehabilitation. The investigators developed an early rehabilitation program (ERP) in our surgical ICU management and assessed safety and efficacy of it.

The ERP started in November 2014 in our 14-bed surgical ICU in Asan Medical Center. The investigators focused on early and 5-step rehabilitation program for patients who were admitted to SICU for at least 3 days. The investigators enrolled 69 patients (pre-ERP group) for 6 months before November 2014 and 62 patients (post-ERP group) for 6 months 1 year after the ERP started. The main measures were safety issues, delirium days, 28-d ventilator free-days, 28-d ICU free-days, hospital length of stay (LOS), ICU mortality, in-hospital mortality and 1 year mortality.

Inclusion criteria

• patients who were admitted in SICU for at least 3 days

Exclusion criteria

• readmission to SICU within current hospitalization open abdomen wound patients major bone fracture patients brain death patients active bleeding patients increased intra-cranial pressure patients paraplegic patients patients or their guardians did not agree with the ERP doctor's decision (Deconditioning patients, Procedure)