Clinical value of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio in early prediction of the incidence of organ dysfunction and 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis

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To evaluate the clinical value of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in early prediction of the incidence of sepsis-induced organ dysfunction and 28-day mortality. A retrospective study was conducted in 815 adult patients with sepsis admitted to the department of critical care medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University from January 2017 to December 2019. The clinical data including age, gender and complication were collected, and the peripheral blood routine indexes at 24, 48 and 72 hours after the diagnosis of sepsis were collected, and the NLR was calculated. The primary endpoint of the study was the incidences of sepsis related acute kidney injury (AKI), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and acute liver failure (ALF); the secondary endpoint was the 28-day in-hospital mortality in septic patients with organ dysfunction. Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression were used to analyze the risk factors of organ dysfunction and 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis, the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve) was drawn and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was calculated to evaluate the predictive value of NLR for organ dysfunction and 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis. A total of 714 patients with sepsis were enrolled for final statistical analysis. There was no significant difference in NLR at 24, 48 and 72 hours in patients with or without organ dysfunction (such as AKI, ARDS, DIC and ALF). Logistic regression analysis showed that there was no significant difference in NLR at 24 hours with 28-day in-hospital mortality [odds ratio (OR) = 1.006, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was 0.994-1.019, P = 0.323]. However, NLR at 48 hours and 72 hours had a significant difference with 28-day mortality (48 hours: OR = 1.026, 95%CI was 1.013-1.040, P = 0.000; 72 hours: OR = 1.021, 95%CI was 1.005-1.037, P = 0.010), which suggested that NLR at 48 hours and 72 hours after diagnosis were independent risks factor for 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis. ROC curve showed that the AUC of NLR at 48 hours was 0.598, 95%CI was 0.540-0.658, P = 0.02; when the cut-off value was 10.1, the sensitivity and specificity for predicting 28-day mortality was 75.2% and 58.0%, respectively; the AUC of NLR at 72 hours was 0.595, 95%CI was 0.536-0.655, P = 0.03; when the cut-off value was 9.24, the sensitivity and specificity for predicting 28-day mortality was 75.3% and 59.9%, respectively. NLR cannot predict the occurrence of AKI, ARDS, DIC and ALF in sepsis in early stage. NLR has a certain clinical value in predicting 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis, but its predictive efficiency is low.