Evaluation of Vasopressor Inflection Point for Short-Term Prognosis of Patients with Septic Shock.

Abstract

The goal of this study is to investigate the clinical value of vasopressor inflection points in the evaluation of short-term prognosis among individuals afflicted with septic shock. A retrospective analysis was conducted on a cohort comprising 56 patients diagnosed with septic shock and receiving treatment at the Department of Critical Care Medicine of the hospital between January 2021 and March 2023. These patients were divided into two groups based on the prognostic outcome: a survival group consisting of 34 patients and a death group consisting of 22 patients. The determination of vasopressor inflection time and procalcitonin (PCT) inflection time of each patient was undertaken with the initiation of vasopressor therapy serving as the reference point. The vasopressor inflection point was defined as the time when the dosage of vasopressors commenced decreasing, while the PCT inflection point denoted the time when PCT levels began to decline. The incidence of patients reaching the vasopressor and PCT inflection points on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days following the initiation of vasopressor therapy was tabulated for both groups. The comparison of inflection points between the two groups at each time point was conducted using Fisher's exact test. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis was employed for univariate prognostic assessment. The diagnostic performance of vasopressor and PCT inflection point was assessed using the four-table method. The discrepancy and consistency between the two methods were evaluated through paired chi-squared test and Kappa consistency test. The vasopressor inflection point demonstrates promising utility in the assessment of short-term prognosis among patients with septic shock, exhibiting sensitivities of 76.4%, 88.2%, and 100%, specificities of 90.9%, 90.9%, and 86.4%, positive predictive values of 92.9%, 93.8%, and 91.9%, and negative predictive values of 71.4% on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th day, respectively. Correspondingly, the Youden indices were calculated as 0.673, 0.791, and 0.864 on these respective days. Notably, all metrics at comparable intervals surpassed those of the PCT inflection point. The vasopressor inflection point presents as a robust prognostic tool for the short-term outcomes in patients with septic shock and exhibits superiority over PCT in prognostic assessment.