Relationship between corticosteroid use and incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia in COVID-19 patients: a retrospective multicenter study

Table 6 Association between corticosteroid use and mortality, MV duration and ICU length of stay according to VAP

	Unadjusted analysis			Adjusted analysis^a
	Unadjusted analysis			Multiple imputation analysis^b			Complete case-analysis
	cHR (95%CI)	P Value	P Het	cHR (95%CI)	P Value	P Het	cHR (95%CI)	P Value	P Het
All-cause 28-day mortality
No VAP	2.36 (1.60–3.46)	< 0.0001	0.18	1.95 (1.31–2.90)	0.001	0.15	1.61 (1.03–2.51)	0.034	0.44
VAP	1.50 (0.87–2.59)	0.14		1.18 (0.66–2.10)	0.56		1.21 (0.67–2.17)	0.51
MV duration
No VAP	1.20 (0.90–1.61)	0.27	0.40	1.29 (0.96–1.73)	0.086	0.19	1.46 (1.03–2.05)	0.03	0.050
VAP	0.96 (0.62–1.50)	0.68		0.90 (0.57–1.42)	0.66		0.81 (0.49–1.31)	0.39
Length of ICU stay
No VAP	0.68 (0.48–0.96)	0.027	0.82	0.76 (0.53–1.07)	0.11	0.78	0.84 (0.56–1.26)	0.40	0.46
VAP	0.73 (0.44–1.19)	0.21		0.69 (0.42–1.14)	0.15		0.65 (0.38–1.12)	0.12

ARDS acute respiratory distress syndrome, BMI body mass index, cHR cause-specific hazard ratio, CI confidence interval, ICU intensive care unit SAPS II Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, VAP ventilator-associated pneumonia
^aAdjusted for age, gender, BMI, SAPS II, McCabe classification, immunosuppression, recent hospitalization, recent antibiotics, shock, ARDS, cardiac arrest
^bAfter handling missing values by multiple imputation (m = 20)
P Het: P Value for the heterogeneity test of effects according to occurrence of VAP

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