Admission blood sugar levels may predict mortality in critically ill patients: Study
Germany: Abnormal blood sugar levels during admission may increase mortality risk in nontraumatic critically ill patients in the emergency department (ED), finds a recent study.
The results, published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine, show that the breakpoint for in-hospital mortality may be an admission blood glucose ≤ 100 and ≥ 272 mg/dL.
"Admission blood glucose is an inexpensive and rapidly available laboratory parameter that may predict mortality and help to identify critically ill patients at risk in a general nontraumatic critically ill ED patient cohort," wrote the authors.
Michael Bernhard, University Hospital of Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany, and colleagues aimed to identify patients at higher risk and to evaluate the relationship between admission blood glucose levels and patient mortality during the management of nontraumatic critically ill patients in the ED.
For this purpose, the researchers performed a prospective, single-center observational study in a German university ED. It included all adult patients admitted to the resuscitation room of the ED between September 1, 2014, and August 31, 2015.
Directly after resuscitation room admission, blood samples for admission blood glucose were taken, and adult patients were divided into groups according to predefined cut-offs between the admission blood glucose. The study endpoint was in-hospital mortality.
During the study period, 532 patients were admitted to the resuscitation room. The data of 523 patients (98.3%) were available for analysis.
Key findings of the study include:
- The overall in-hospital mortality was 34.2%.
- In comparison with an in-hospital mortality of 25.2% at an admission blood glucose of 101–136 mg/dL (n = 107), admission blood glucose of ≤ 100 mg/dL (n = 25, odds ratio [OR] 6.30), 272–361 mg/dL (n = 63, OR 2.53), and ≥ 362 mg/dL (n = 44, OR 2.96) were associated with a higher mortality.
"Abnormal admission blood glucose is associated with a high in-hospital mortality," wrote the authors. "Admission blood glucose is an inexpensive and rapidly available laboratory parameter that may predict mortality and help to identify critically ill patients at risk in a general nontraumatic critically ill ED patient cohort."
"Our findings show that the breakpoint for in-hospital mortality may be an admission blood glucose ≤ 100 and ≥ 272 mg/dL." they concluded.
Reference:
The study titled, "Admission Blood Glucose in the Emergency Department is Associated with Increased In-Hospital Mortality in Nontraumatic Critically Ill Patients." is published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine.
DOI: https://www.jem-journal.com/article/S0736-4679(21)00384-X/fulltext
