Lactate/Albumin Ratio Could be a Prognostic Indicator for Patients with Post-operative Intestinal Obstruction

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the value of lactate/albumin ratio in prediction of mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients with post-operative intestinal obstruction. Method: A retrospective analysis was conducted with patient data from the eICU Collaborative Research Database (eICU-CRD). According to the outcome, the patients with post-operative intestinal obstruction who were admitted to ICU within 24 hours after surgery were separated into two groups: survivors (233 cases) and non-survivors (35 cases). Their clinical characteristics and scoring data were collected. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the risk factors for death, and these risk factors were further included for the construction of the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) to evaluate the predictive value of death for these patients. Results: In-hospital mortality for patients admitted to ICU with post-operative intestinal obstruction was 13.1% (35/268). The level of lactate/albumin ratio was significantly higher in non-survivors than in survivors (1.36±1.54 versus 0.70±0.64; P<0.001). Logistic regression analysis showed that the lactate/albumin ratio (OR=0.667, 95%CI: 1.328-2.485, P=0.001) could predict in-hospital mortality independently for the patients in ICU with post-operative intestinal obstruction. Further analysis showed that the area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of lactate/albumin ratio level was 0.681. Conclusions: These data suggested that the lactate/albumin ratio has potential predictive value for mortality in ICU patients with post-operative intestinal obstruction.