Association between hemogram‑derived indices and culture‑positive infections in intensive care population

To investigate the relationship between hemogram parameters and bacterial growth in cultures of blood, urine or sputum in intensive care unit patients.

This retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary referral hospital between March 2015 and December 2017. Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics, hemogram parameters and other laboratory test results of patients admitted to intensive care unit were recorded. Patients were divided into two groups as patients who were infected, and those who did not have any infectious agents grown in the culture dish, and then the groups were compared with each other.

There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of baseline demographic and clinical characteristics. When the groups were compared in terms of hemogram parameters, the neutrophil‑to‑lymphocyte ratio (p < 0.001),  platelet‑to‑lymphocyte ratio (p = 0.013),  plateletcrit (p = 0.028) and mean platelet volume (p < 0.001)  were significantly higher in infected patients than in non-infected patients.

We suggest that neutrophil‑to‑lymphocyte ratio, platelet‑to‑lymphocyte ratio, plateletcrit, and mean platelet volume could be used as infection markers in the intensive care unit population (Tab. 1, Ref. 25).