Reduced Platelets Associated with All-Cause Mortality in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Platelets are crucial for maintaining physiological equilibrium, thrombosis formation, inflammation, bacterial defense, wound repair, angiogenesis, and tumorigenesis. In the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), children frequently exhibit platelet reductions or functional alterations due to diverse pathological conditions, which significantly influence disease progression and therapeutic approaches. We analyzed the association between platelets count and its derived parameters and all-cause mortality. Adjusted smoothing spline plots, subgroup analysis and segmented multivariate logistic regression analysis were conducted to estimate the relative risk between proportional risk between platelets and all-cause mortality. Of the 11625 children, 677 (5.82%) died. After adjusting for confounders, there was a negative association between platelets and the risk of all-cause mortality in PICU. For every 100 × 10^9/L increase in platelets, the risk of death was reduced by 17% (adjusted OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.78, 0.89). The results of sensitivity analysis showed that in different stratified analyses (age, ICU category,WBC Count), the effect of platelets count on all-cause mortality remained stable. After adjusting for inflammation, nutrition, and liver function factors, platelets reduction is still an independent risk factor for PICU all-cause mortality.