Evaluating equitable care in the ICU: Creating a causal inference framework to assess the impact of life-sustaining interventions across racial and ethnic groups.

Background: Variability in the provision of intensive care unit (ICU)-interventions may lead to disparities between socially defined racial-ethnic groups.
Research Question: We used causal inference to examine the use of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), renal replacement therapy (RRT), and vasopressor agents (VP) to identify disparities in outcomes across race-ethnicity in patients with sepsis.
Study Design and Methods: Single-center, academic referral hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Retrospective analysis of treatment effect with a targeted trial design categorized by treatment assignment within the first 24 hours in the MIMIC-IV dataset (2008- 2019) using targeted maximum likelihood estimation. Of 76,943 ICU stays in MIMIC-IV, 32,971 adult stays fulfilling sepsis-3 criteria were included. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcomes were hospital-free days, and occurrence of nosocomial infection stratified by predicted mortality probability ranges and self-reported race-ethnicity. Average treatment effects by treatment type and race-ethnicity, Racial-ethnic group (REG) or White group (WG), were estimated.
Results: Of 19,419 admissions that met inclusion criteria, median age was 68 years, 57.4% were women, 82% were White, and mortality was 18.2%. There was no difference in mortality benefit associated with the administration of IMV, RRT, or VP between the REG and the WG. There was also no difference in hospital-free days or nosocomial infections. These findings are unchanged with different eligibility periods.
Interpretation: There were no differences in the treatment outcomes from three life-sustaining interventions in the ICU according to race-ethnicity. While there was no discernable harm from the treatments across mortality risk, there was also no measurable benefit. These findings highlight the need for research to understand better the risk-benefit of life-sustaining interventions in the ICU.