Management and outcomes of critically ill adult patients with convulsive status epilepticus and preadmission functional impairments

[Display omitted] •Functional impairments at baseline concerned 11.6% of patients with convulsive status epilepticus requiring intensive care unit admission.•Functional impairments at baseline were more frequent in patients with a history of epilepsy and preexisting, ultimately fatal comorbidities.•Status epilepticus patients with functional impairments at baseline had higher frequencies of life-sustaining treatment-limitation decisions.•Preadmission functional status was not independently associated with the 1-year functional outcome. Functional status is among the criteria relevant to decisions about intensive care unit (ICU) admission and level of care. Our main objective was to describe the characteristics and outcomes of adult patients requiring ICU admission for Convulsive Status Epilepticus (CSE) according to whether their functional status was previously impaired. We retrospectively analyzed data from consecutive adults who were admitted to two French ICUs for CSE between 2005 and 2018 and then included them retrospectively in the Ictal Registry. Pre-existing functional impairment was defined as a Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) score of 3 before admission. The primary outcome measure was a loss of ≥1 GOS score point at 1 year. Multivariate analysis was used to identify factors associated with this measure. The 206 women and 293 men had a median age of 59 years [47–70 years]. The preadmission GOS score was 3 in 56 (11.2%) patients and 4 or 5 in 443 patients. Compared to the GOS-4/5 group, the GOS-3 group was characterized by a higher frequency of treatment-limitation decisions (35.7% vs. 12%, P