Prediction of early intensive care unit mortality with serial serum lactate levels and its clearance in children with septic shock and multiorgan dysfunction syndrome

Abstract

Introduction: Serum lactate is an important parameter to assess adequacy of microcirculation in septic shock. However, prediction of outcome in pediatric septic shock with mutli organ dysfunction (MODS) based on serial lactate levels and it's clearance is not well studied. Materials and Methods: In this prospective study from a tertiary PICU in India, 43 children with septic shock and MODS aged 1month to 16 years were enrolled over one year. Our objective was to predict early ICU mortality (within 72 hours) as well as in-hospital mortality using serial serum lactate levels and it's rate of clearance. Serial serum lactate levels were measured at admission to PICU (0 hours) and 6 hourly for initial 24 hours and 12 hourly till 120 hours. Results: The median (IQR) age of enrolled children was 32 (4.5,96) months. Median (IQR) PRISM-12 score was 16.5 (12,22). Seventeen children died. Serum lactate ≥2.6 mmol/L at 24 hours predicted early ICU mortality with sensitivity and specificity of 83.3% and 85.7% (AUC: 0.873, 95% CI 0.727, 1.000). In hospital mortality could be predicted with sensitivity and specificity of 60% and 73% (AUC: 0.734, 95% CI 0.571, 0.897) when serum lactate ≥1.8 mmol/L at 24 hours. Percentage of lactate clearance (median, IQR) at 24 hours of ICU stay were 15.1 (-21.4, 24.6) and -33.2 ( -262, 0.4) (p=0.04) between survivors and non-survivors at 72 hours of ICU stay. Conclusion: Pediatric septic shock and MODS carries high mortality and serum lactate of ≥2.6 mmol/L predicted early ICU mortality with good precision.

Keywords

• children
• lactate
• mortality
• sepsis
• shock