Serum uric acid on admission cannot predict long-term outcome of critically ill patients: a retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Qinchang Chen,1,* Kai Huang,2,* Lingling Li,2 Xixia Lin,2 Cong Ding,2 Junrui Zhang,3 Qingui Chen1 1Department of Medical Intensive Care Unit, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 2Division of Vascular and Thyroid Surgery, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China; 3Guangzhou Institute of Standardization, Guangzhou, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Purpose: We aimed to evaluate the association of serum uric acid on admission with long-term outcome of critically ill patients. Materials and methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data extracted from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database. The primary endpoint was 90-day mortality. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed, and multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to adjust for potential confounders. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were also used to assess the mortality predictions. Results: A total of 2,123 patients were included finally with a PSM cohort consisting of 556 90-day non-survivors matched 1:1 with 556 90-day survivors. No statistically significant difference of median admission uric acid was observed between the two groups (survivors 5.50 mg/dL vs non-survivors 5.60 mg/dL, p=0.536). ROC area under the curve was 0.511 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.477–0.545), suggesting that uric acid had poor discriminative powers for predicting 90-day mortality. No significant association between uric acid and 90-day mortality was found (hazard ratio 1.00, 95% CI 0.98–1.03, p=0.6835). Conclusion: Serum uric acid on intensive care unit admission failed to predict 90-day mortality of critically ill patients. Keywords: uric acid, critical care, mortality, risk factors

Keywords

• uric acid
• critical care
• mortality
• risk factors