DYSLIPIDEMIA IN CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS

Abstract

Background Hypercholesterolemia
is generally considered to be
bad and hypocholesterolemia is good. But
in critically ill patients hypocholesterolemia
may actually increase the morbidity and
mortality. The prognostic significance of
profound hypocholesterolemia in critically
ill patients has not been investigated in our
populationMaterials and Methods A retrospective
cross-sectional study has been
carried out on critically ill patients in our
tertiary care hospital. Base-line data, clinical
history, the prognosis and the results of
routine laboratory investigations including
lipid profile were recorded. The patients (n
47) were classified into two groups survivors
(n 24) and non-survivors (n 23). The
results were analyzed using students t test
and ROC plots.Results Several critically ill
patients had extremely low lipid levels
which were far below the reference range.
The mean lipids values observed in our
study population were TC 95 45, HDL c 14
6 , LDL- c 36 31 and TGL 181 111 mgdL
respectively. TC, LDL-c and HDL-c were
significantly lower in the non survivors (p
0.05) as compared
with survivors. The ROC curves showed
C statistic values of 0.763 for TC (p
0.0003) and 0.741 for LDL - c (p 0.0013).
Conclusion Our study has demonstrated
that low levels of both TC and LDL-c
could serve as predictors of poor prognosis
and mortality in critically ill patients.