The influence of corticosteroid treatment on the outcome of influenza A(H1N1pdm09)-related critical illness

Table 7 Predictors of in-hospital mortality using adjustment for baseline and time-dependent between-group differences over the first week of ICU admission and until discharge from ICU among critically ill patients with H1N1pdm09

Variable	Rate ratio (95 % CI)	p Value
Corticosteroid use	0.96 (0.28–3.28)	0.95
APACHE II score (1-point increase)	1.07 (1.01–1.13)	0.02
SOFA score, day 1 (1-point increase)	0.97 (0.87–1.09)	0.63
Age (1-year increase)	1.00 (0.97–1.03)	0.87
Female sex	1.53 (0.65–3.83)	0.32
Asthma (yes vs no)	0.97 (0.27–3.52)	0.96
Autoimmune disease (yes vs no)	1.92 (0.54–6.81)	0.31

APACHE Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation, SOFA Sequential Organ Failure Assessment, CI confidence interval
In the final model (n = 286), we considered the following baseline variables upon examination of the predictors of outcome from other analyses (univariate, multivariate, and propensity matching) and accounting for overly correlated pairs of variables, including admission bacterial coinfection, SOFA score, APACHE II score, age, sex, asthma, autoimmune disease; and the following time-dependent variables SOFA (previous day), worsening ventilation (previous day or 2 prior days), positive blood or respiratory culture (previous day or 2 prior days), antibiotics started (previous day), and neuraminidase started (previous day).

ISSN: 1364-8535