OBJECTIVE

To investigate the relationship between stress glucose elevation and the risk of 28 d all-cause mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients, and to compare the predictive efficacy of different stress glucose elevation indicators.

METHODS

ICU patients who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria in the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care Ⅳ (MIMIC-Ⅳ) database were used as the study subjects, and the stress glucose elevation indicators were divided into Q1 (0-25%), Q2 (>25%- 75%), and Q3 (>75%-100%) groups, with whether death occurred in the ICU and the duration of treatment in the ICU as outcome variables, and demographic characteristics, laboratory indicators, and comorbidities as covariates, Cox regression and restricted cubic splines were used to explore the association between stress glucose elevation and the risk of 28 d all-cause death in ICU patients; and subject work characteristics [receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and the area under curve (AUC)] were used to evaluate the predictive efficacy of different stress glucose elevation indicators, The stress hyperglycemia indexes included: stress hyperglycemia ratio (SHR1, SHR2), glucose gap (GG); and the stress hyperglycemia index was further incorporated into the Oxford acute severity of illness score (OASIS) to investigate the predictive efficacy of the improved scores: the AUC was used to assess the score discrimination, and the larger the AUC indicated, the better score discrimination. The Brier score was used to evaluate the calibration of the score, and a smaller Brier score indicated a better calibration of the score.

RESULTS

A total of 5 249 ICU patients were included, of whom 7.56% occurred in ICU death. Cox regression analysis after adjusting for confounders showed that the (95%) for 28 d all-cause mortality in the ICU patients was 1.545 (1.077-2.217), 1.602 (1.142-2.249) and 1.442 (1.001-2.061) for the highest group Q3 compared with the lowest group Q1 for SHR1, SHR2 and GG, respectively, and The risk of death in the ICU patients increased progressively with increasing indicators of stressful blood glucose elevation ( < 0.05). Restricted cubic spline analysis showed a linear relationship between SHR and the 28 d all-cause mortality risk (>0.05). the AUC of SHR2 and GG was significantly higher than that of SHR1: AUC=0.691 (95%: 0.661-0.720), AUC=0.685 (95%: 0.655-0.714), and AUC=0.680 (95%: 0.650-0.709), < 0.05. The inclusion of SHR2 in the OASIS scores significantly improved the discrimination and calibration of the scores: AUC=0.820 (95%: 0.791-0.848), AUC+SHR2=0.832 (95%: 0.804-0.859), < 0.05; Brier score=0.071, Brier score=0.069.

CONCLUSION

Stressful glucose elevation is strongly associated with 28 d all-cause mortality risk in ICU patients and may inform clinical management and decision making in intensive care patients.