Admission D-dimer to lymphocyte counts ratio as a novel biomarker for predicting the in-hospital mortality in patients with acute aortic dissection

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory factors are well-established indicators for vascular disease, but the D-dimer to lymphocyte count ratio (DLR) is not measured in routine clinical care. Screening of DLR in individuals may identify individuals at in-hopital mortality of acute aortic dissection (AD). METHODS: A retrospective analysis of clinical data from 2013 to 2020 was conducted to identify which factors were related to in-hospital mortality risk of AD. Baseline clinical features, cardiovascular risk factors, and laboratory parameters were obtained from the hospital database. The end point was in-hospital mortality. Forward conditional logistic regression was performed to identify independent risk factors for AA in-hospital death. The cutoff value of the DLR should be ideally calculated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. RESULTS: The in-hospital mortality rate was 15% (48 of 320 patients). Patients with in-hospital mortality had a higher admission mean DLR level than the alive group (1740 vs. 1010, P < .05). The cutoff point of DLR was 907. The in-hospital mortality rate in the high-level DLR group was significantly higher than that in the low-level DLR group (P < .05). Univariate analysis showed that 8 of 38 factors were associated with in-hospital mortality (P < .05), including admission WBC, neutrophils, lymphocytes, neutrophils/lymphocytes (NLR), prothrombin time (PT), heart rate (HR), D-dimer, and DLR. In multivariate analysis, DLR (odds ratio [OR] 2.127, 95% CI 1.034–4.373, P = 0.040), HR (odds ratio [OR] 1.016, 95% CI 1.002–1.030, P = 0.029) and PT (odds ratio [OR] 1.231, 95% CI 1.018–1.189, P = 0.032) were determined to be independent predictors of in-hospital mortality (P < .05). CONCLUSION: Compared with the common clinical parameters PT and HR, serum DLR level on admission is an uncommon but independent parameter that can be used to assess in-hospital mortality in patients with acute AD.