Background Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and return to work are
important outcomes in critical care medicine, reaching beyond mortality.
Little is known on factors predictive of HRQoL and return to work in critical
illness, including the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and no
evidence exists on the role of quality of care (QoC) for outcomes in survivors
of ARDS. It is the aim of the DACAPO study (“Surviving ARDS: the influence of
QoC and individual patient characteristics on quality of life”) to investigate
the role of QoC and individual patient characteristics on quality of life and
return to work. Methods/Design A prospective, observational, multi-centre
patient cohort study will be performed in Germany, using hospitals from the
“ARDS Network Germany” as the main recruiting centres. It is envisaged to
recruit 2400 patients into the DACAPO study and to analyse a study population
of 1500 survivors. They will be followed up until 12 months after discharge
from hospital. QoC will be assessed as process quality, structural quality and
volume at the institutional level. The main outcomes (HRQoL and return to
work) will be assessed by self-report questionnaires. Further data collection
includes general medical and ARDS-related characteristics of patients as well
as sociodemographic and psycho-social parameters. Multilevel hierarchical
modelling will be performed to analyse the effects of QoC and individual
patient characteristics on outcomes, taking the cluster structure of the data
into account. Discussion By obtaining comprehensive data at patient and
hospital level using a prospective multi-centre design, the DACAPO-study is
the first study investigating the influence of QoC on individual outcomes of
ARDS survivors
