Septic shock in chronic dialysis patients: clinical characteristics, antimicrobial therapy and mortality

To describe the clinical characteristics and in-hospital mortality of chronic dialysis-dependent end-stage kidney disease patients with septic shock in comparison to septic shock patients not receiving chronic dialysis.

Using an international, multicenter database, we conducted a retrospective analysis of data collected from 10,414 patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with septic shock from 1989 to 2013, of which 800 (7.7 %) were chronic dialysis patients. Data on demographic characteristics, sites of infection, microbial pathogens, antimicrobial usage patterns, and in-hospital mortality were aggregated and compared for chronic dialysis and non-dialysis patients. Multivariate time-varying Cox models with and without propensity score matching were constructed to determine the association between dialysis and in-hospital death.

Septic shock secondary to central venous catheter infection, peritonitis, ischemic bowel, and cellulitis was more frequent in chronic dialysis patients. The isolation of resistant organisms (10.7 vs. 7.1 %; p = 0.005) and delays in receiving antimicrobials (6.0 vs. 5.0 h) were more common in chronic dialysis patients than in non-dialysis patients. Delayed appropriate antimicrobial therapy was associated with an increased risk of death in chronic dialysis patients (p < 0.0001). In-hospital death occurred in 54.8 and 49.0 % of chronic dialysis and non-dialysis patients, respectively. After propensity score matching, there was no difference in overall survival between chronic dialysis and non-dialysis patients, but survival in chronic dialysis patients decreased over time compared to non-dialysis patients.

The demographic and clinical characteristics of chronic dialysis patients with septic shock differ from those of similar non-dialysis patients. However, there was no significant difference in mortality between the chronic dialysis and non-dialysis patients with septic shock enrolled in this analysis.