Correlation between serum phosphate and all-cause mortality in critically ill patients with coronary heart disease accompanied by chronic kidney disease: a retrospective study using the MIMIC-IV database.

BACKGROUND

The adverse clinical endpoints of cardiovascular and kidney diseases are correlated with increased serum phosphate levels. However, in critically ill patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) accompanied by chronic kidney disease (CKD), the prognostic value of serum phosphate remains unclear.

METHODS

Patients' medical records from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care IV database who had concomitant CKD and CHD were classified into four distinct groups in this large retrospective observational cohort study based on the quartiles of serum phosphate levels. Vital status and the duration of hospital and ICU stays within the short-term follow-up periods of 30 and 90 days constituted the primary outcomes. All-cause mortality in the intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital constituted the secondary outcomes. Further, the Cox proportional hazard and restricted cubic spline (RCS) regression models were employed to ascertain how serum phosphate levels correlated with the primary outcomes. In addition, the occurrence rate of the secondary outcomes across the four quartiles was determined utilizing the Kaplan-Meier method.

RESULTS

Among the total 3,557 patients (67.6% male) included, the hospital and ICU all-cause mortality rates were 14.6% and 10%, separately. Higher quartiles of serum phosphate concentrations were associated with shorter short-term survival rates, as shown by the Kaplan-Meier curves. Additionally, the Cox proportional hazards analysis illustrated that serum phosphate was independently linked to a higher death risk in the hospital [HR, 1.10 (95% CI: 1.03-1.18),  = 0.007] and ICU [HR, 1.14 (95% CI: 1.07-1.22),  < 0.001]. Lastly, the RCS regression models suggested a robust non-linear correlation between serum phosphate concentrations and death risk in the ICU and hospital (both for non-linearity <0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The prognostic value of serum phosphate is significant in critically ill patients with CHD accompanied by CKD. Furthermore, serum phosphate is potentially valuable for identifying patients with this concomitant condition.