Prognostic value of inflammation biomarkers for 30-day mortality in critically ill patients with stroke.

Objective: To explore the values of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR), neutrophil to albumin ratio (NAR), prognostic nutritional index (PNI), systemic immune inflammatory index (SII) and red cell distribution width to albumin ratio (RA) for evaluating the risk of 30-day mortality of ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke patients.

Methods: In this cohort study, the data of 1,601 patients diagnosed with stroke were extracted from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database. Among them, 908 were hemorrhagic stroke patients and 693 were ischemic stroke patients. Demographic and clinical variables of patients were collected. Univariate and multivariable Cox regression were performed to evaluate the predictive values of NLR, PLR, SII, NAR, RA, and PNI for 30-day mortality in hemorrhagic stroke or ischemic stroke patients. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to assess the predictive values of NLR, NAR, and RA for 30-day mortality of hemorrhagic stroke patients.

Results: At the end of follow-up, 226 hemorrhagic stroke patients and 216 ischemic stroke patients died. The elevated NLR level was associated with increased risk of 30-day mortality in hemorrhagic stroke [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.17, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06-1.29]. The increased NAR level was associated with elevated risk of 30-day mortality in hemorrhagic stroke (HR = 1.16, 95% CI: 1.02-1.30). The high RA level was linked with increased risk of 30-day mortality (HR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.23-1.69). No significant correlation was observed in these inflammation biomarkers with the risk of 30-day mortality in ischemic stroke patients. The area under the curves (AUCs) of NLR, RA, and NAR for evaluating the risk of 30-day mortality of hemorrhagic stroke patients were 0.552 (95% CI: 0.503-0.601), 0.644 (95% CI: 0.590-0.699) and 0.541 (95% CI: 0.490-0.592).

Conclusion: NLR, NAR, and RA were potential prognostic biomarkers for predicting 30-day mortality of hemorrhagic stroke patients, which might provide clinicians an easy and cheap way to quickly identify patients with high risk of mortality.