Septic Shock Short-Term Outcomes in Patients With Psychiatric Disorders: Analysis From the National Inpatient Sample Database

Background: Major psychiatric disorders are associated with lower life expectancy primarily due to comorbid illnesses and suboptimal access to health care. Large-scale contemporary data in the United States on in-hospital mortality of patients with major psychiatric disorder and sepsis are lacking. Objective: To describe the short-term outcomes of hospitalized patients with major psychiatric disorders and septic shock. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study using the National Inpatient Sample database from 2016 to 2019 to identify septic shock hospitalizations in patients with versus without major psychiatric disorder (defined as schizophrenia and affective disorders). Baseline variables and in-hospital mortality trends were compared between the 2 groups. Results: Out of 1,653,255 hospitalizations with septic shock identified between 2016 and 2019, 16.2% had a diagnosis of major psychiatric disorder as defined above. After adjusting for various patient-level and hospital-level demographics and coexisting clinical conditions in a multivariable logistic regression, the odds of in-hospital mortality in patients with any major psychiatric disorder were 0.71 times that of those without a diagnosis of psychiatric illness (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.69-0.73; P < 0.001). Similarly, when the disorders were divided into 2 categories for subanalysis, those with schizophrenia had 38% lower odds of dying compared to those without schizophrenia (adjusted odds ratio, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.58-0.66; P < 0.001). Those with affective disorders had 25% lower odds of in-hospital mortality than those without a diagnosis of an affective disorder (adjusted odds ratio, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.73-0.77; P < 0.001). The adjusted mean length of stay for those diagnosed with major psychiatric disorder was 0.38 days longer than those without significant psychiatric illness (95% CI, 0.28-0.49; P < 0.001). On the other hand, the mean hospitalization charges were $10,516 less for patients with a major psychiatric disorder compared to those without (95% CI, -$11,830 to -$9,201; P < 0.001). Conclusions: Hospitalized patients with major psychiatric disorder and septic shock had lower risk of short-term mortality. Further studies are needed to examine the reasons behind this lower in-hospital mortality risk.