The Clinical Utility of Lactate/Albumin Ratio as an Early Prognostic Marker of Intensive Care Unit Mortality: A Prospective Observational Study

Background: The lactate/albumin (L/A) ratio is considered to be a superior prognostic indicator due to its correlation with death and multiorgan failure in severe sepsis. Aim of study: To evaluate and analyze predictive value of L/A ratio as a mortality indicator in patients with septic shock.Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study was involved 50 patients suffered from septic shock rendering to criteria established by Third International Consensus Definitions for Septic Shock (Sepsis-3) at Intensive Care Unit of Alexandria Armed Forces Medical Complex. All subjects were alienated into both groups according to existence at end of study: Group I (n= 24): was survivors and Group II (n= 26): was non survivors. All patients underwent a comprehensive initial clinical assessment.Results: Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis confirmed that procalcitonin had the highest predictive accuracy for intensive care unit mortality with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.872 (95% CI: 0.765–0.979, p < 0.001), sensitivity of 92%, and specificity of 90%. L/A ratio also showed strong discriminatory ability (AUC = 0.853, 95% CI: 0.744–0.961, p < 0.001) with sensitivity 90% and specificity 87%, followed by lactate (AUC = 0.824, 95% CI: 0.698–0.950, p < 0.001).Conclusion: A prognostic biomarker for mortality prediction in septic shock cases is L/A ratio, which is highly effective, showing superior discriminatory ability compared to traditional severity scores like SOFA and APACHE II.