I can't fetch anything else than '1' to my PDO query
With drupal_set_message('&lt;pre&gt;test '.print_r($record).'&lt;/pre&gt;'); you're putting the return value of print_r into a string, not printing the contents of $record.

You can acccess the value you need with:

$result = $query-&gt;fetchAssoc();

// make sure we found something
if (empty($result) || empty($result[0]['review_nid'])) {
  dpm("No result");      
}

// load the noad we found
$node = node_load($nid)
dpm($node);