Milrinone is associated with lower in hospital mortality in patients with cardiogenic shock: a retrospective analysis of the MIMIC-III database

Abstract BackgroundAlthough milrinone has been widely used in daily clinical practice, its effect on survival in patients with cardiogenic shock (CS) is not known. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of milrinone on in hospital mortality in a large critical care cohort of patients with CS of various etiological causes.MethodsPatients with CS were identified from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to account for the baseline differences in the probability to receive milrinone or not. Multivariate Cox regression model was employed to adjust for imbalance by including parameters and potential confounders.ResultsA total of 1068 critically ill patients with CS were enrolled for this analysis, including 161 in the milrinone group and 907 in the non-milrinone group. Multivariate Cox regression model results found milrinone was associated with a significantly decreased in hospital mortality in critically ill patients with CS (HR 0.61, 95% CI 0.45-0.83; P=0.001). The impact of milrinone on survival benefit in CS was remaining in patients with non-ACS, while it was not statistically significant in subgroup with ACS (HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.40-1.07; P=0.093). Similar results were replicated after PSM.ConclusionsOur study observed that milrinone was related with improved survival in patients with CS, but it was not associated with improved outcome in patients complicated with ACS. The results need to be verified in randomized controlled trials.