Abstract
BACKGROUND: Millions of patients undergo cardiac surgery each year. The red blood cell distribution width (RDW) could help predict the prognosis of patients who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass surgery. We investigated whether the RDW has robust predictive value for the 30-day mortality among patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) after undergoing cardiac surgery. METHODS: Using the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV Database, we retrieved data for 11,634 patients who underwent cardiac surgery in an ICU. We performed multivariate Cox regression analysis to model the association between the RDW and 30-day mortality and plotted Kaplan-Meier curves. Subgroup analyses were stratified using relevant covariates. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the predictive value of the RDWs. RESULTS: The total 30-day mortality rate was 4.2% (485/11,502). The elevated-RDW group had a higher 30-day mortality rate than the normal-RDW group (P&0.001). The robustness of our data analysis was confirmed by performing subgroup analyses. Each unit increase in the RDW was associated with a 17% increase in 30-day mortality when the RDW was used as a continuous variable (adjusted hazard ratio=1.17, 95% confidence interval, 1.10-1.25). Our ROC results showed the predictive value of the RDW. CONCLUSIONS: An elevated RDW was associated with a higher 30-day mortality in patients after undergoing cardiac surgery in an ICU setting. The RDW can serve as an efficient and accessible method for predicting the mortality of patients in ICUs following cardiac surgery.