Abstract
BACKGROUND: The association between the stress hyperglycemia ratio (SHR), which represents the degree of acute stress hyperglycemic status, and the risk of mortality in cerebrovascular disease patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the predictive ability of SHR for in-hospital mortality in critically ill cerebrovascular disease patients and to assess its potential to enhance existing predictive models. METHODS: We extracted data from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC-IV) database for patients diagnosed with cerebrovascular disease and used Cox regression to assess the association between SHR and mortality. To investigate the nature of this association, we applied restricted cubic spline analysis to determine if it is linear. The predictive ability of SHR for mortality risk was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the C-index. RESULTS: We included a total of 2,461 patients, with a mean age of 70.55 ± 14.59 years, and 1,221 (49.61%) being female. Cox regression analysis revealed that SHR was independently associated with both in-hospital mortality (per standard deviation (SD) increase: hazard ratio (HR) 1.35, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.23-1.48) and ICU mortality (per SD increase: HR 1.37, 95% CI 1.21-1.54). The risk of death increased in an approximately linear fashion when SHR exceeded 0.77-0.79. Subgroup analysis indicated the association was more pronounced in non-diabetic individuals. Additionally, incorporating SHR into existing models improved both discrimination and reclassification performance. CONCLUSION: SHR serves as an independent risk factor for in-hospital mortality in cerebrovascular disease patients in the ICU. Adding SHR to existing models enhances their predictive performance, offering clinical value in the identification of high-risk patients.