Impact Of Serum Magnesium Levels On Clinical Outcome Of Critically Ill Patients - A One Year Prospective Study

Abstract

Background and objectives Hypomagnesemia is an emerging electrolyte disturbance in hospitalized patients; especially in the critically ill ones and it has been shown to predict mortality in the ICU. This study was aimed to find the impact of admission serum magnesium levels and patient outcome considering, mortality , need and duration of ventilatory support, length of stay in ICU and APACHE II Score. Methodology The present one year prospective study was conducted under the Department of Medicine, KLES Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Belgaum on critically ill patients. A total of 90 patients from January 2012 to December 2012 were studied. Patients were divided as hypomagnesemics and normomagnesemics. Results In the present study in 64.44% in hypomagnesemics and 75.56% in normomagnesemics were males. In hypomagnesemics 48.89% of patients each were aged more than 60 years whereas normomagnesemics, 28.89% were aged between 31 t 45 and 46 to 60 years (p=0.008). 17.78% of patients with magnesium levels < 1.8 mg/dL had APACHE II score of > 30. 53.33% patients hypomagnesemia expired compared to 28.89% with normomagnesemia (p=0.018). Significantly higher number of patients with hypomagnesemia required ventilation (88.89%) compared to patient with normomagnesemia (51.11%) (p<0.001). Conclusion and interpretation Overall, the present study showed that, patients with hypomagnesemia at admission are significantly at high risk of mortality, requirement of ventilation, prolonged ventilatory support and longer duration of hospital stay and also predict higher APACHE II scores.