Association Between Early Administration of Norepinephrine in Septic Shock and Survival

Septic shock still carries a high mortality rate despite all advances in emergency and critical care practices. Early interventions have been proven in many aspects to improve outcome. However, early administration of vasopressors namely norepinephrine in septic shock is still controversial.

To identify the association between early norepinephrine administration and mortality in septic shock patients.

A retrospective review of a prospectively collected ICU data for septic shock patients in medical and surgical intensive care units for one year period was carried out. Case definition was based on sepsis 3 definitions. Data included patients' characteristics of demographics, admission diagnosis, APACHE II score, physiological data (including vital signs and laboratory values). The primary outcome was 28 days of mortality.

A total of 243 patients identified during the study period, 132 (54.3%) were male. The mean age was found to be 58.9 ± 20.3. The overall rate of 28 days mortality was 87 (47.5%). Norepinephrine was started for 68.9% of the patients in ICU, the rest were started in the emergency department. The highest survival rates were among patients who received norepinephrine within first hour (58.1%) and second (51.5%). A binary logistic regression analysis has been performed to adjust for possible confounders. It was revealed that being intubated and mechanically ventilated or having higher APACHE II score were strongly associated with non-survival rates (OR=7.049, p-0.002), (OR=1.124, p-<0.001) respectively.

Our results showed that septic shock patients who had early administration of norepinephrine had a higher survival rate. Intubation and invasive ventilation and higher APACHE II score associated with higher none survival rate.