Impact of cardiac arrhythmias on in-hospital mortality in patients with cytokine release syndrome: Insights from National Inpatient Sample.

Abstract

e24017 Background: Cytokine release syndrome (CSR) is a pervasive inflammatory response characterized by elevated body temperature and multi-organ dysfunction. This syndrome is linked to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, various immunotherapies, or haploidentical hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). It can manifest as a fever, fatigue, headache, rash, diarrhea, arthralgia, and myalgia. In some cases, it can progress to hypotension, hypoxia, and an uncontrolled systemic inflammatory response leading to circulatory collapse, pulmonary edema, renal damage, and multi-organ failure. Cardiac evaluation in the context of CSR is crucial for assessing these manifestations, but little is known about the arrhythmias associated with this therapy, and there is limited information in the literature. Methods: A retrospective study using the National Inpatient Sample to identify patients diagnosed with CRS, and the arrhythmias they experienced during their hospitalizations between January and December 2020. The primary endpoint was the incidence of various arrhythmias. Furthermore, Independent predictors of in-hospital mortality were analyzed, with p values, adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and confidence intervals (CI) calculated for each variable. Results: A total of 4675 patients were diagnosed with CRS in 2020, 39% of whom were females. The mortality rate of patients with CRS was 22%. In addition, the mortality rate of patients who developed arrhythmias was 43% while that of patients who did not was 17% (p < 0.01). The mean age was higher in the arrhythmia cohort compared with the non-arrhythmia cohort (70 vs 60.7 years, p < 0.01). Predictive factors associated with increased mortality included development of arrhythmias, age, hispanic race, asian or pacific islander race, obesity, previous myocardial infarction, and electrolyte abnormalities with an aOR of 2.22 (P < 0.01, CI 1.51-3.28), 1.03 (P < 0.01, CI 1.01-1.05), 1.85 (P = 0.04, CI 1.02-3.34), 2.57 (P = 0.014, CI 1.02-3.34), 1.72 (P = 0.018, CI 1.09-2.69), 3.26 (P = 0.008, CI 1.36-7.8), and 4.19 (P < 0.01, CI 2.7-6.4) respectively. Female sex was found to be protective against mortality with an aOR of 0.5 (P = 0.004, CI 0.31-0.8). Conclusions: Our study reveals that developing arrhythmias is more common in older patients with CRS. Patients diagnosed with arrhythmias during their hospitalization experienced poorer outcomes. Adjusted predictors of mortality include the development of arrhythmias during hospitalization, age, hispanic race, asian or pacific islander race, obesity, previous myocardial infarction, and electrolyte imbalances. Additionally, female sex was found to be a protective against mortality. Given these findings, physicians should strive to be more vigilant when treating patients with CRS who have any of these predictors of mortality until further data is available.