Association between the albumin-to-lymphocyte ratio and short-term mortality in critically Ill pediatric patients: a retrospective cohort study and machine learning analysis

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The study investigates the association between albumin-to-lymphocyte ratio (ALR) and short-term mortality in critically ill pediatric patients.
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Data were collected from 7,591 children admitted to a PICU between 2010 and 2019, with a 28-day mortality rate of 4.53%.
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Cox models indicated that both intermediate and highest ALR tertiles were linked to lower mortality risk compared to the lowest tertile.
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A non-linear relationship between ALR and mortality was identified, with the highest survival probability in the intermediate ALR tertile.
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The XGBoost machine learning model demonstrated the best performance in predicting 28-day mortality, achieving an AUC of 0.835.

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