title: Health-related quality of life after a drowning incident as a child.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To describe health-related quality of life (HRQoL), quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained and school performance in subjects having received either bystander or emergency medical service personnel initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after a drowning incident in childhood.
  
  
  METHODS
  64 children admitted to pediatric intensive care (PICU) after successful CPR between 1985 and 2007. Eleven died in the PICU, 9 other within 6 months. In 2009 all long-term survivors, except for two, lived at home. Of the 40 patients eligible for the study, 29 (73%) responded to a questionnaire. HRQoL was assessed with the generic 15D, or its versions for adolescents (16D) or children (17D), and compared to that of general population. These HRQoL scores, age-specific survival probabilities, and HRQoL scores of the general population were used in a Markov model to estimate the number of QALYs gained.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Median age of the respondents was 17.3 (range: 3.0-28.4) years and 62% were male. At the time of drowning their median age had been 3.0 (range: 1.2-15.7) years. The drowning incident was associated with a significant loss in HRQoL in the oldest age group (total HRQoL total score 0.881 compared to 0.971 in the general population, P<0.01) but not in children (HRQoL score 0.944 vs. 0.938). When submersion time exceeded 10min mean HRQoL score was significantly lower than in patients with a shorter submersion (0.844 vs. 0.938, P=0.032). The mean undiscounted and discounted (at 3%) number of QALYs gained by treatment were 40.8 and 17.0, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A good HRQoL will be achieved in the majority of patients surviving long-term after a drowning incident in childhood, although HRQoL is affected by the submersion time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Children's Hospital, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland. pertti.suominen@hus.fi
authors.forename: P K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Suominen
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vähätalo
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sintonen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Haverinen
authors.forename: R P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Roine
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015701:Near Drowning; D011788:Quality of Life; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult