In this study, we sought to identify whether there was an age difference in factors related to 30-day hospital mortality in rhabdomyolysis. We observed that certain known prognostic factors (8–11), such as sex, CPK and creatinine levels on admission, lower estimated GFR, or number of medications, are not evenly distributed according to age. We therefore demonstrated an influence of age on the prognostic profile of patients. With a median age of 75.0 years, our population was much older than the populations used to develop prognostic scores (50.7 years in McMahon, 40.0 years in Simpsons), and more representative of a geriatric population.
In univariate and multivariate analysis, age appears to be a factor inconsistently associated with 30-day in-hospital mortality after rhabdomyolysis, with an increased mortality for the 60–69 age group. Other factors associated with mortality are Charlson comorbidity score, initial qSOFA score and peak creatinine. Our results did not show an association between phosphorus levels and mortality, but such link cannot be excluded, considering the data that were missing in the file, and the possible impact on the statistical power. Further studies would be necessary to document the role of phosphorus measurements for prognostic purposes in older patients with rhabdomyolysis. The number of medications at admission did not come out as a prognostic criterion, contrary to what was described by Wongrakpanich in an exclusively older population (range: 66–101, median: 80 years) (10). In our study, age was significantly associated with the number of drugs, and the maximum was observed in the 70–79 age group (i.e. at the median of the Wongrakpanich study). This tends to validate the hypothesis that age influences prognostic factors of rhabdomyolysis, notably through multimorbidity.
One of the limitations of our study is the amount of missing data, due to the retrospective design of the study. Indeed, 124 patients with rhabdomyolysis were transferred to local hospitals and we were therefore not able to collect the biological evolution, complications and in-hospital mortality at 30 days. Similarly, we do not have data to ensure the exhaustivity of rhabdomyolysis coding in the database we used. However, as the database we analyzed is used by the health insurance for the pricing of hospital stays, its quality is regularly controlled. Since rhabdomyolysis pathology justifies high invoicing, it seems unlikely that a significant number of stays are missing.
The CPK level (initial or peak), which is representative of the damaged muscle mass, does not appear to be a prognostic criterion for mortality. This finding is in agreement with previous studies (8, 10, 11). The monitoring of myoglobinuria, an earlier reflection of rhabdomyolysis which is directly related to the occurrence of acute renal failure, could have been relevant but was not available in this retrospective study (18, 19). The CPK level and peak are significantly higher in young subjects, probably in relation to muscle mass (20, 21). Thus, our results argue in favor of defining CPK thresholds that may be lower for older persons, to retain the diagnosis or to assess the probability of its severity and thus adapt the therapeutic strategy.
Neither the occurrence of acute renal failure (48.0%) nor peak creatinine appeared in multivariate analysis to be associated with 30-day in-hospital mortality, unlike in previous studies. The definition of renal failure that we use (30% decrease in estimated GFR) is not consensual (22) but has the advantage of simplicity and availability of measurements. However, this definition carries the risk of misclassification of subjects. Indeed, some older patients may have a particularly low baseline creatinine level in relation to reduced muscle mass and acute renal failure may therefore go undetected (23). The frequency of acute renal failure during rhabdomyolysis is highly variable in the literature, ranging from 10 to 58% depending on the study (3, 4, 8). This variability can be due to different inclusion criteria (CPK level, resuscitation), different etiologies and diagnostic criteria for acute renal failure in these studies (3, 24).
Finally, we found different levels of prescribed fluid infusion according to age in our study. This may be related to different etiologies (septic and muscular origins being more frequent in young subjects), but also to a reluctance of clinicians to use volemic expansion in older patients, particularly in cases of cardiac comorbidities. Analysis of the literature shows lower levels of filling for older adults, particularly in cases of septic shock, explained by the existence of comorbidities (25, 26).
We observed a mortality rate of 10.5%, i.e. 23 deaths, which is slightly lower than the rates found in the literature (14.0% in McMahon's study (8); 14.0% in Rodriguez's study (3)) but comparable to the rate of the Wongrakpanich study (10) ((10.2%). This may be due to our inclusion criteria (CPK > 1000 IU/L vs. 5000 IU/L for many studies). Given this low number of events a larger study would be useful to confirm these results.