The relationship between transthoracic echocardiography and mortality in adult patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome: analysis of the MIMIC-III database

BACKGROUND: For patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), timely assessment of the condition and real-time adjustment of the treatment plan are of critical importance. To this end, transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is widely used in clinical practice, but whether TTE can improve the short-term prognosis of MODS patients is currently unclear. METHODS: We extracted data of patients from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database and included cases according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. The primary endpoint was the mortality within 28 days after admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), and multi-variate regression analysis was conducted to infer the risk factors associated death within 28 days after ICU admission. Double robust analysis was conducted to investigate the correlation between TTE and the endpoint. A gradient-boosted model (GBM) was constructed to calculate the propensity score (PS) of patients received TTE, so as to reduce the difference of variates between these two groups. RESULTS: A total of 13,844 MODS cases were included and were divided into a TTE group and a non-TTE group. There were 5,022 cases (36.28%) in the TTE group, 2,416 (48.10%) of whom were female; and 8,822 (63.72%) in the non-TTE group, 4,129 of whom (46.80%) were female. The covariates that contributed significantly to PS included chronic heart failure (CHF), creatine kinase (CK), troponin, partial pressure of oxygen (PO(2)), and sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores. Double robust analysis showed that within 28 days after ICU admission, the TTE group had lower risk of death when compared with the non-TTE group. The adjusted odds ratio (OR) value of TTE for 28 days death was 0.73 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.65–0.82; P<0.001]. The other 3 models had similar results, suggesting that conduct TTE for patients with MODS in ICU was associated with lower risk of 28 days mortality. CONCLUSIONS: TTE can reduce the mortality of MODS patients in the ICU.