Is A Hemoglobin Concentration As Low As 7 g/dL Adequate For All Critically Ill Patients With Sepsis? Legitimate Doubts Remain!

The correlation of hemoglobin and 28-day mortality in septic patients: secondary data mining using the MIMIC-IV database

BACKGROUND

Previous studies found minimal evidence and raised controversy about the link between hemoglobin and 28-day mortality in sepsis patients. As a result, the purpose of this study was to examine the association between hemoglobin and 28-day death in sepsis patients by analyzing the Medical Intensive Care IV (MIMIC-IV) database from 2008 to 2019 at an advanced medical center in Boston, Massachusetts.

METHODS

We extracted 34,916 sepsis patients from the MIMIC-IV retrospective cohort database, using hemoglobin as the exposure variable and 28-day death as the outcome variable, and after adjusting for confounders (demographic indicators, Charlson co-morbidity index, SOFA score, vital signs, medication use status (glucocorticoids, vasoactive drugs, antibiotics, and immunoglobulins, etc.)), we investigated the independent effects of hemoglobin and 28-day risk of death by binary logistic regression as well as two-piecewise linear model, respectively.

RESULTS

Hemoglobin levels and 28-day mortality were shown to be non-linearly related.The inflection points were 104 g/L and 128 g/L, respectively. When HGB levels were between 41 and 104 g/L, there was a 10% decrease in the risk of 28-day mortality (OR: 0.90; 95% CI: 0.87 to 0.94, p-value = 0.0001). However, in the range of 104-128 g/L, we did not observe a significant association between hemoglobin and 28-day mortality (OR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.35, P value = 0.0586). When HGB was in the range of 128-207 g/L, there was a 7% increase in the risk of 28-day mortality for every 1 unit increase in HGB (OR: 1.07; 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.15, P value = 0.0424).

CONCLUSION

In patients with sepsis, baseline hemoglobin was related to a U-shaped risk of 28-day death. When HGB was in the range of 12.8-20.7 g/dL, there was a 7% increase in the risk of 28-day mortality for every 1 unit increase in HGB.

Early Hemoglobin Status as a Predictor of Long-Term Mortality for Sepsis Patients in Intensive Care Units

OBJECTIVES

It is still not clear what influences hemoglobin has on the outcomes of patients with sepsis. The intention of this research is to investigate the impact of early hemoglobin levels on clinical outcomes for sepsis.

METHODS

In this single-center, cohort study, each patient was put into one of four groups dependent on hemoglobin levels of 70 g/L, 80 g/L, or 90 g/L in the first 48 h of being admitted to intensive care unit (ICU). Adjustments for baseline/confounding factors were made using the multiple Cox regression model.

RESULTS

In all, 235 septic patients were examined in this research. The non-survivors exhibited significantly higher levels for early hemoglobin status at or below 80 g/L (33.7% vs. 19.4%, P = 0.016) than survivors. Survival curve demonstrated that septic patients with early hemoglobin levels at or below 80 g/L survived at significantly lower rates than those with hemoglobin above 80 g/L. Multivariate Cox analysis demonstrated that levels of 1-year mortality rose as early hemoglobin levels fell in the first 48 h after ICU admission, with relative risks for 80 g/L to 90 g/L, 70 g/L to 80 g/L, and at or below 70 g/L being respectively 1.11 (95% CI: 0.654-1.882), 1.742 (95% CI: 0.969-3.133), 1.981 (95% CI: 1.124-3.492) times higher than those for hemoglobin levels above 90 g/L.

CONCLUSIONS

Hemoglobin levels at or below 80 g/L in the first 48 h after ICU admission are an alternative indicator for predicting long-term mortality of sepsis. Awareness should be encouraged of the importance of targeting early hemoglobin levels when treating sepsis to improve prognosis.