Association Between Serum Sodium and Long-Term Mortality in Critically Ill Patients with Comorbid Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Analysis from the MIMIC-IV Database

Int J Chron Obstruct Pulmon Dis. 2022 May 12:17:1143-1155. doi: 10.2147/COPD.S353741. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to investigate the relationship between serum sodium levels and 1-year and 3-year mortality in critically ill patients with comorbid chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using real-world data.

Methods: The data of this study were collected from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV (MIMIC-IV) database. First of all, we used the Kaplan-Meier curves and multivariable Cox regression analyses to measure the relationship between serum sodium levels and 1-year and 3-year mortality for critically ill patients with comorbid COPD. Next, a restricted cubic spline was used to analyze non-parametrically the relationship between mortality and serum sodium as a continuous variable. In addition, we also analyzed the mortality of different subgroups.

Results: A total of 5540 eligible subjects were extracted. Compared to normal serum sodium levels, adjusted multivariable Cox regression analysis confirmed that hyponatremia and hypernatremia were still significantly associated with 1-year mortality (HR = 1.551, 95% CI = 1.333~1.805, P<0.001; HR = 1.683, 95% CI = 1.317~2.151, P<0.001, respectively) and 3-year mortality (HR = 1.507, 95% CI = 1.302~1.744, P<0.001; HR = 1.612, 95% CI = 1.269~2.048, P<0.001, respectively). In patients with or without adjustment variables, there was an obvious U-shaped non-linear relationship between serum sodium levels and 1-year and 3-year mortality with a reference level of 139 mmol/L, which indicated that patients in both hyponatremia and hypernatremia had higher mortality than normal serum sodium levels.

Conclusion: This study showed that both hyponatremia and hypernatremia were related to increased 1-year and 3-year mortality in critically ill patients with comorbid COPD, which provides a new reference for the control strategy of correcting serum sodium levels.

Keywords: MIMIC-IV; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; intensive care unit; serum sodium.

MeSH terms

  • Critical Care
  • Critical Illness
  • Humans
  • Hypernatremia* / diagnosis
  • Hyponatremia* / diagnosis
  • Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive* / diagnosis
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Sodium

Substances

  • Sodium

Grants and funding

This study was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC2002500).