Abstract Rationale Sepsis remains a major cause of mortality in intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide. The lactate/albumin ratio (LAR) has recently been proposed as a simple and reliable prognostic marker reflecting both tissue hypoperfusion and systemic inflammation. However, evidence in the Vietnamese population is limited. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted in adult patients diagnosed with sepsis or septic shock according to Sepsis-3 criteria. Baseline demographic, clinical, and laboratory data were collected within the first 24 hours of ICU admission. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to determine the predictive accuracy and optimal cut-off values of LAR, lactate, and SOFA for 28-day mortality. Results A total of 125 patients were included (mean age 65.8 ± 15.1 years; 62.4% male). The mean SOFA score was 8.76 ± 2.31, and the 28-day mortality rate was 39.7%. The LAR demonstrated strong discriminative power (AUC = 0.846; cut-off = 1.05 g/dL; sensitivity = 69.2%; specificity = 85.1%), outperforming lactate alone (AUC = 0.783) and comparable to the SOFA score (AUC = 0.862). Conclusion The lactate-to-albumin ratio is a simple, low-cost, and reliable biomarker for predicting short-term mortality in septic ICU patients. LAR may serve as a valuable adjunct to the SOFA score for early risk stratification, particularly in resource-limited settings. This abstract is funded by: None
Nguyen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.