Biomarkers in Shock Patients and Their Value as A Prognostic Tool; A Prospective Multi-Center Cohort Study

To investigate the prognostic value of clinical and laboratory tests in prediction of outcome in patients at day 30 post presentation to hospital with shock and to determine the prognostic value of mid regional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) on mortality prediction at 30 days in the same patient cohort.

This prospective multicenter cohort study analyzed data from patients who had presenting with shock to the emergency departments of eleven urban, tertiary-care University hospitals in Spain between March, 2011 and May, 2011. Recruitment of patients was via convenience sampling. Inclusion criteria included age between 14 and 100 years with clinical diagnostic criteria of shock on admission. Various patient parameters were analysed, such as age, sex, past medical history. Other clinical variables were measured on arrival to hospital, including sequential organ failure assessment score (score SOFA), blood pressure, oxygen saturations, capillary refill time and shock index (SI). Laboratory variables investigated included base excess, MR-proADM, lactate, C-Reactive Protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT).

There were 212 patients included in the study from the eleven hospitals involved. The mean age was 72.2 years old and 60.4% of the patients were men. In the discriminant analysis only age, MR-proADM and PCT remained in the final discriminant equation. The separate analysis of MR-proADM showed that, in the non-survivors group, MR-proADM levels are significantly higher than those found in the group of survivors (p<0.001).

Age, PCT and MR-proADM were useful to predict short-term mortality in patients presenting to the emergency department shock. This suggests that PCT and MR-proADM in combination with the most common prediction models will improve prognostic value.