Factors associated with time to successful weaning in mechanically ventilated organophosphate poisoned patients

We designed this study to identify the factors associated with time to successful weaning in mechanically ventilated organophosphate (OP)-poisoned patients as the primary outcomes while duration of mechanical ventilation (MV) support, intensive care unit (ICU), and hospital length of stay (LOS) and in-hospital mortality as the secondary outcomes. We conducted a retrospective study of mechanically ventilated OP-poisoned patients admitted to the ICU of Poison Control Center of Ain Shams, Cairo, Egypt, starting from January 2019 to December 2019. Weaning was considered successful if the patient succeeded in the first spontaneous breathing trial of weaning and did not need reinstitution of MV. We used Cox proportional hazards regression models to identify factors associated with time to successful weaning in the studied patients. A total of 55 patients were enrolled in the study. Thirty-eight patients were weaned successfully. Lower initial red cell distribution width (RDW) levels [adjusted hazard ratio (HR), 0.299, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.184-0.486)] and lower initial doses of atropine [adjusted HR, 0.97, 95% CI (0.935-0.999)] were independently associated with shorter time to achieve successful weaning. Successfully weaned patients had significantly longer hospital LOS (p = 0.019) and no reported in-hospital mortality (p < 0.001) compared with patients who failed to wean. We concluded that initial RDW and initial doses of atropine were found to be the strongest factors associated with time to successful weaning in mechanically ventilated OP-poisoned patients. RDW and atropine can be used as simple risk assessment tools in OP poisoning.