Impact of pediatric critical illness on development into puberty, adolescence and young adulthood: a role for endocrine disturbances

Critically ill children are admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit for a wide variety of insults that acutely require intensive vital organ support. As the critical illness occurs when normally the children would develop, grow and mature, the children often survive with multi-domain health sequelae, including impaired growth and morbidities in physical, emotional, social, and cognitive functioning, summarized as post-intensive care syndrome in children (PICS-p). Earlier studies on PICS-p focused on childhood problems. We will thoroughly investigate the impact of critical illness on further development into puberty, adolescence and young adulthood. We therefore will perform a detailed assessment of pubertal development and other aspects of physical development, in relation to neurocognitive functioning, emotion/behavior and daily life impact, and will investigate whether neuroendocrine disturbances may underlie any developmental impairments.