Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte count ratio in predicting prognosis of septic shock patients

Abstract

Abstract Background Septic shock is one of the most common causes of admission to the intensive care unit in the world and one of the most common causes of death among intensive care patients. Since the definition of sepsis and septic shock and many studies have been designed to understand everything about sepsis regarding mechanism, pathophysiology, complications, diagnosis, management and all other aspects. Objective To find the association between neutrophil to lymphocyte count ratio and the mortality from septic shock patients. The work aims also to determine if this ratio can be used as a prognostic marker of septic shock patients and to compare this ratio with other sepsis markers as C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin. Patients and Methods This study was conducted prospectively in critical care unit in Ain Shams Hospital, a university-affiliated, tertiary referral center in Cairo, Egypt. Study subjects included 125 patients between January 2018 to January 2019. The ethics committee of our institution approved the study protocol, and written informed consent was obtained from each patient’s family. Results In our study, the neutrophils count was significantly increased in survived patients compared with early and late mortality patients in day 1 while lymphocytes count was lower in survived patient than early and late mortality patients and the NLCR in our study was higher in survived patients than early and late mortality patients. In day 4, our results revealed significant increase in neutrophils count in patients of late mortality compared with its count in survived patients, while lymphocytes didn't show any significant difference compared with its count in survived patients with significant increase in NLCR in patients of late mortality compared with those of survived patients in day 4. Both CRP and procalcitonin are increased in patients of early and late mortality groups compared with its value in survived patients in day 1 and 4. Conclusion This study demonstrates a real relationship between the NLCR and the risk of death in septic shock patients. Septic shock patients at risk of early death presented a low NLCR at admission, although late death was associated with an increased NLCR during the first 5 days. Early and late death should be distinguished because they may involve different underlying mechanisms, and the NLCR might be considered as a discriminant indicator of early or late death. In addition, our findings provide more insight into biology. The circulating neutrophil and lymphocyte trends observed in this study offer an interesting mechanistic viewpoint. We observed that circulating lymphocytes and the NLCR behave in opposite ways in early- and late death patients, supporting the hypothesis that divergent mechanisms could be involved in these two groups.