Association between furosemide administration and clinical outcomes in patients with sepsis-associated acute kidney injury receiving renal replacement therapy: a retrospective observational cohort study based on MIMIC-IV database

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between furosemide administration and clinical outcomes in patients with sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SAKI) receiving renal replacement therapy (RRT). DESIGN: A retrospective observational cohort study. SETTING: The data were collected from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care IV (MIMIC-IV) database, which contains clinical data from more than 380 000 patients admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs) of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center from 2008 to 2019. PARTICIPANTS: All adult patients with SAKI receiving RRT were enrolled. Data for each patient within the first 24 hours of ICU admission were extracted from the MIMIC-IV database. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality, and the secondary outcome was the length of hospital stay, length of ICU stay, RRT-free time and ventilator-free time. Logistic regression was used to investigate the association between furosemide administration and in-hospital mortality. Subgroup analysis was employed to explore the potential sources of heterogeneity. RESULTS: A total of 1663 patients with SAKI receiving RRT were enrolled in the study, of whom 991 patients (59.6%) were retrospectively allocated to the Furosemide group and 672 (40.4%) patients to the non-furosemide group. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression showed that furosemide administration was associated with reduced in-hospital mortality, respectively ((OR 0.77; 95% CI 0.63 to 0.93; p=0.008 < 0.05), (OR 0.59; 95% CI 0.46 to 0.75; p<0.001)). The association remained robust to different ways of adjusting for baseline confounding (all p<0.05). Subgroup analysis suggested that AKI-stage may be a source of heterogeneity. Patients in the furosemide group also had longer RRT-free time (p<0.001) and longer ventilator-free time (p<0.001) than those in the non-furosemide group. CONCLUSIONS: Furosemide is associated with decreased in-hospital mortality, longer RRT-free time and ventilator-free time in patients with SAKI receiving RRT.