Shahreyar M, et al. - The intent of the authors was to scrutinize the link between severe sepsis with cardiac arrhythmias. In addition, they explored the upshot of severe sepsis on the outcomes of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. High risk of atrial and life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias were brought to light among patients with severe sepsis. Findings reported a substantially greater risk of cardiac arrest and increased mortality in patients who were hospitalized, despite adjustment for potential confounding factors.

Methods

• Hospital discharge data was extracted from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) during the year 2012.
• The eligible candidates included all patients aged 18 years or older.
• In order to detect patients with discharge diagnosis of severe sepsis, atrial brillation (A Fib), atrial utter (AFL), ventricular brillation (VF) arrest and non-ventricular brillation (non-VF) arrest, researchers used the International Classification of Diseases-Clinical Modi cation, 9th revision (ICD-9-CM) code.
• The correlation between arrhythmias with severe sepsis was examined by defining 2 groups: Group a-with severe sepsis was compared to group b-without severe sepsis.
• With the aid of univariate and multivariate logistic regression methods, experts adjusted for potential confounding factors.
• Additionally, they identified variables related to cardiac arrhythmias.

Results

• This research constituted 30,712,524 NIS hospital discharges (weighted for national estimate).
• Among the enrollees, 1,756,965 patients (5.7%) had severe sepsis.
• The multivariate analysis shed light on the connection between severe sepsis with higher risk of A Fib (OR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.21-1.24), AFL (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.30-1.40), VF arrest (OR, 2.58; 95% CI, 2.38-2.79) (OR, 3.31; 95% CI, 3.07-3.57) and non-VF arrest (OR, 4.91; 95% CI, 4.74-5.07), after adjusting for potential confounders.
• Severe sepsis group illustrated that cardiac arrhythmia correlated with higher in-hospital mortality (OR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.37-1.45), length of stay (LOS) >75% quartile (OR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.46-1.53) and total hospital charges >75% quartile (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.34-1.41).
• An independent link was demonstrated between advanced age, male sex, ischemic heart disease, diabetes mellitus (DM), congestive heart failure (CHF), valvular heart disease, respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation and use of vasopressors with cardiac arrhythmias.