Introduction:

The quality of life of critically ill patients who survive treatment in intensive care units is lower than that of the general population. Baseline health status and severity of clinical condition on admission to intensive care are risk factors for quality of life and functionality.

Objective:

To analyze the level of knowledge on quality of life and functionality of intensive care survivors.

Materials and methods:

An exploratory review was conducted by searching studies published between January 2010 and May 2020 in Scielo, PubMed, Science Direct, ProQuest, Redalyc, Dialnet, OVID, and Scopus databases. The study was conducted according to the PRISMA statement. Full texts that met the inclusion criteria were reviewed and analyzed in the final selection of articles.

Results:

Of 1814 articles identified, 65 articles describing the quality of life and functionality in post-intensive care patients were screened. Finally, 16 were included to analyze the article's characteristics, population characteristics, and variables of analysis for assessing the quality of life and functionality of post-intensive care survivors.

Conclusions:

Studies on quality of life and functionality in intensive care survivors were conducted mainly in Europe between 2010 and 2016. They are primarily prospective observational studies correlating factors determining mental and physical health after intensive care discharge. Multiple scales were applied; the most used were the SF-36 and the EQ-5D to assess the quality of life and the Barthel Index to determine functional status in patients discharged from intensive care. The SF- 36 and Barthel index reported impaired quality of life and functionality of the intensive care survivor population.

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