Hospital Acquired Anemia and in-hospital Mortality in Intensive Care Patients with ARDS.

Introduction: Hospital-acquired anemia (HAA) is common, especially in the most intensive care patients (ICP). Several literature series suggest that patients who develop HAA have increased mortality and morbidity compared with those who do not. The cause of HAA is likely multifactorial; iatrogenic blood loss,impaired erythropoiesis, bleeding episodes all can lead to HAA in ICP. Little research has focused on HAA, which develops during ICU admission of ARDS patients. The objective of this study was to investigate the incidence HAA, as well as its relationship with mortality, in COVID-19 associated ARDS patients admitted to ICU. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed all adult COVID-19 ARDS patients admitted to our ICU between January 2020 and December 2021 (n=1,007). Patients with missing data (n=7) or who have a length of ICU stay of less than 24 hours (n=10) were excluded. In addition, patients with chronic anemia at admission (n=445) were also excluded, because main focus of the study was development of HAA. Anemia is defined as a hemoglobin (Hgb) value <12 g/dL in women and <13 g/dL in men by WHO. HAA was defined as a nadir Hgb value during the course of ICU stay meeting WHO criteria. We further grouped Hgb by degree into mild anemia (Hgb >11 and <12 g/dL in women, >11 and<13 g/dL in men), moderate anemia (Hgb >9 and ≤11 g/dL) and severe anemia (Hgb ≤9 g/dL). COVID-19 ARDS is diagnosed when the patient with confirmed COVID-19 infection meets the Berlin 2012 ARDS diagnostic criteria. Baseline patient characteristics, admission Hgb and lactate levels, lengths of ICU stay and in-hospital mortality of patients who developed HAA were compared with those who did not develop HAA. We further stratified the patients based on the severity of HAA. Results: HAA developed in 373 (68.4%) patients. Characteristics and mortality rates of patients with and without HAA are presents in Table 1. Table 2 shows the data of the patients by presence and severity of HAA. Conclusion: Development of HAA is common and associated with higher in-hospital mortality. Patients who developed severe HAA has the highest mortality rates (73.1%). Hospitals must raise awareness of HAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]