These studies have helped us to improve our understanding of patients' lives after intensive care treatment, and this knowledge should drive us to look for ways to prevent and improve post-critical illness sequelae.
Most foodborne illness occurs as gastroenteritis, but the effect of nongastrointestinal illnesses and sequelae are substantial because they can result in hospitalization and, occasionally, death.
RMSF causes an acute febrile illness that, if untreated, can cause severe illness, permanent sequelae requiring lifelong medical support, and death.
A significant number of patients survive the critical illness with sequelae that severely limit the quality of life and with expectations for a full functional recovery.
Although the infection usually causes a mild, self-limiting illness, serious sequelae, including Guillain-Barré syndrome and death, occur in approximately 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 20,000 infections, respectively (1 ).
Hospitalisations for chronic illnesses and their sequelae are a major contributor to rising healthcare costs in Western societies.
We estimated a yearly rate of 1,620 incident cases of sequelae illnesses, 50 hospitalizations, and 0.5 deaths per million population circa 2010.
To estimate deaths for all 4 sequelae illnesses resulting from the respective foodborne pathogens, we used national death data for 2001 2010 from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, using ICD-10-AM codes (Technical Appendix 4).
We estimated that, circa 2010 in Australia, 1,080 (90% CrI 700 1,600) hospitalizations for sequelae illnesses occurred from domestically acquired foodborne gastroenteritis, equating to 50 (90% CrI 30 70) hospitalizations per million population per year (Table 4).
To assess the effect of SARS on public health and outcomes, data are needed about who becomes ill, how they contracted their illness, and the sequelae.
