Importance: Laboratory data are frequently collected throughout the care of critically ill patients. Currently, these data are interpreted by comparison with values from healthy outpatient volunteers. Whether this is the most useful comparison has yet to be demonstrated.
Objectives: To understand how the distribution of intensive care unit (ICU) laboratory values differs from the reference range, and how these distributions are related to patient outcomes.
Design, setting, and participants: Cross-sectional study of a large critical care database, the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care database, from January 1, 2001, to October 31, 2012. The database is collected from ICU data from a large tertiary medical center in Boston, Massachusetts. The data are collected from medical, cardiac, neurologic, and surgical ICUs. All patients in the database from all ICUs for 2001 to 2012 were included. Common laboratory measurements over the time window of interest were sampled. The analysis was conducted from March to June 2017.
Main outcomes and measures: The overlapping coefficient and Cohen standardized mean difference between distributions were calculated, and kernel density estimate visualizations for the association between laboratory values and the probability of death or quartile of ICU length of stay were created.
Results: Among 38 605 patients in the ICU (21 852 [56.6%] male; mean [SD] age, 74.5 [55.1] years), 8878 (23%) had the best outcome (ICU survival, shortest quartile length of stay) and 3090 (8%) had the worst outcome (ICU nonsurvival). Distribution curves based on ICU data differed significantly from the hospital standard range (mean [SD] overlapping coefficient, 0.51 [0.32-0.69]). All laboratory values for the best outcome group differed significantly from those in the worst outcome group. Both the best and worst outcome group curves revealed little overlap with and marked divergence from the reference range.
Conclusions and relevance: The standard reference ranges obtained from healthy volunteers differ from the analogous range generated from data from patients in intensive care. Laboratory data interpretation may benefit from greater consideration of clinically contextual and outcomes-related factors.