Historically, outcome research in paediatrics is either based on an age-specific approach, such as follow-up studies of premature infants [41, 72, 73] , or on a more disease-oriented approach, such as follow-up studies in survivors of cardiothoracic surgery or trauma [15, 55, 64, 70] . These studies have shown substantial physical, psychological and neurocognitive sequelae, interfering with daily life and normal development. In addition, effects on parents and siblings have been shown [26] . Evaluative research of adult intensive care survivors showed the effect of intensive care treatment per se. Irrespective of the underlying illnesses, sequelae on all domains with effects on QoL were found [2, 19, 58, 75] . In multi-disciplinary paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) populations, reports on outcome are scarce [24, 25] .