Objective: The role of systemic corticosteroids in pathophysiology and treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome is controversial. Use of prehospital systemic corticosteroid therapy may prevent the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome and improve hospital outcomes.
Design: This is a preplanned retrospective subgroup analysis of the prospectively identified cohort from a trial by the U.S. Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group designed to validate the Lung Injury Prediction Score.
Setting: Twenty-two acute care hospitals.
Patients: : Five thousand eighty-nine patients with at least one risk factor for acute respiratory distress syndrome at the time of hospitalization.
Intervention: Propensity-based analysis of previously recorded data.
Measurements and main results: Three hundred sixty-four patients were on systemic corticosteroids. Prevalence of acute respiratory distress syndrome was 7.7% and 6.9% (odds ratio, 1.1 [95% CI, 0.8-1.7]; p = 0.54) for patients on systemic corticosteroid and not on systemic corticosteroids, respectively. A propensity for being on systemic corticosteroids was derived through logistic regression by using all available covariates. Subsequently, 354 patients (97%) on systemic corticosteroids were matched to 1,093 not on systemic corticosteroids by their propensity score for a total of 1,447 patients in the matched set. Adjusted risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome (odds ratio, 0.96 [95% CI, 0.54-1.38]), invasive ventilation (odds ratio, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.62-1.12]), and in-hospital mortality (odds ratio, 0.97 [95% CI, 0.63-1.49]) was then calculated from the propensity-matched sample using conditional logistic regression model. No significant associations were present.
Conclusions: Prehospital use of systemic corticosteroids neither decreased the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome among patients hospitalized with at one least risk factor, nor affected the need for mechanical ventilation or hospital mortality.