Instruments Assessing Cognitive Impairment in Survivors of Critical Illness and Reporting of Race Norms: A Systematic Review

To conduct a systematic review to summarize cognitive instruments being used in long-term outcome studies of survivors of adult critical illness, as well as evaluate whether these measures are reported as using patient demographic norms, specifically race norms.A comprehensive search was conducted in PubMed (National Center for Biotechnology Information), Excerpta Medica dataBASE (Ovid), Psychological Information Database (ProQuest), and Web of Science (Clarivate) for English language studies published since 2002.Studies were eligible if the population included adult ICU survivors assessed for postdischarge cognitive outcomes.Two independent reviewers screened abstracts, examined full text, and extracted data from all eligible articles.A total of 98 articles (55 unique cohorts: 22 general ICU, 14 Acute respiratory distress syndrome/Acute respiratory failure/Sepsis, 19 COVID-19 and other subpopulations) were eligible for data extraction and synthesis. Among general ICU survivors, the majority of studies (Less than half of the studies measuring cognitive outcomes in ICU survivors reported the use of norming characteristics. There is substantial heterogeneity in how studies reported the use of cognitive instruments, and hence, the prevalence of the use of patient norms may be underestimated. These findings are important in the development of appropriate standards for use and reporting of neuropsychological tests among ICU survivors.