The effects of midazolam or propofol plus fentanyl on ICU mortality: a retrospective study based on the MIMIC-IV database

BACKGROUND: Patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are often under stress and fail to cooperate well with invasive treatments. Analgesia and sedation are of great significance for reducing the suffering of patients and ensuring the application and effectiveness of treatment. For better clinical choice, we aimed to explore the effect of the combination of propofol + fentanyl or midazolam + fentanyl on the short-term prognosis of hospitalized patients in the ICU. METHODS: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we retrospectively included patients in the MIMIC-IV database receiving midazolam + fentanyl or propofol + fentanyl analgesic and sedative treatment using Structured Query Language (SQL) to extract clinical data from the MIMIC-IV database. The primary endpoint was the death rate within 28 days after the patient was admitted to the ICU. Doubly robust estimation was used to infer the relationship between sedation and analgesia and 28 days outcome. The gradient boosted model (GBM) was used to estimate the propensity score (PS) of the patient’s sedation and analgesia program, PS was used as the weight, and the inverse probabilities weighting (IPW) model was used to generate a weighted cohort. RESULTS: In total, 4,188 cases were included, with 2,174 (51.9%) in the propofol group and 2,014 (48.1%) in the midazolam group. In the PS score matching cohort, the 28-day mortality of patients in the midazolam group was 30.8%, and the 28-day mortality of patients in the propofol group was 25.5%. The adjusted odds ratio (OR) value was 1.421 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.118–1.806, P<0.001]. Patients in the propofol group did not use vasoactive drugs for a longer period of time than the midazolam group, and patients in the propofol group received significantly more fluids than those in the midazolam group in the first three days after admission to the ICU. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with midazolam combined with fentanyl, propofol combined with fentanyl for sedation and analgesia can reduce the risk of short-term death in ICU patients.