Plasma Glucose Level as a Predictor of In-Hospital Mortality in Patients at an Emergency Room: A Retrospective Cohort Study

A few studies have examined the association between plasma glucose (PG) levels of emergency room (ER) patients and their in-hospital mortality (1–3), but the threshold value of hypoglycemia at which the risk is increased has not been established. The objective of the current study was to investigate this issue. A retrospective cohort study of ER patients and various risk factors for in-hospital death has been under way since 2014 at Iizuka Hospital (4), a teaching hospital with 1,048 beds located at the center of the Chikuho region of Fukuoka Prefecture on Japan's Kyushu Island. A detailed description of this survey has already been published (4). All 57,443 consecutive patients ≥18 years old who presented to Iizuka Hospital's ER by ambulance between 1 February 2006 and 30 September 2014 were evaluated. Among the 57,443 patients, 391 patients had repeated ER visits on two consecutive days; in those patients, only the index case was used, in order to comply with the assumption of independent observations. The 2,317 patients who experienced cardiopulmonary arrest, the 298 patients who were pregnant, and the 3,823 patients whose glucose level at baseline was not obtained were excluded. …