We assumed 50% of the study selleckbio patients had sepsis, a quarter of them were prescribed antipyretic therapy and the mortality of ICU patients was 12%. Assuming an 8% change in ICU mortality with antipyretic both in septic and non-septic patients, a power of 0.80, and an �� level of 0.05, we required 1,400 participants. As we expected to include approximately 500 participants per month, we planned to conduct the current study for three months.P-values of less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. All analyses were performed using commercially available statistical software (SPSS 19.0, SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA). Data are reported in accordance with the guidelines laid out in Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) [20].ResultsWe studied 1,429 consecutive patients.

We excluded four patients for whom data were incomplete (4/1,429, 0.3%), leaving a total of 1,425 patients with 63,441 body temperature measurements eligible for inclusion in the study. Seventy-two percent of body temperature was measured by axillary thermometers, 16% by bladder catheter thermistors, 9% by tympanic membrane thermometers and 3% by pulmonary artery catheter thermistors. The median APACHE II score was 17, and 28-day mortality was 12.0%. The median length of stay in ICU was 7 days and in hospital 26 days. Among the 1,425 patients, 606 patients met the criteria for sepsis during the first 24 h. The remaining 819 patients were without sepsis (Figure (Figure11).Figure 1Flow chart showing current study. ICU, intensive care units.

Table Table11 provides clinical characteristics, MAXICU and antipyretic treatments for septic and non-septic patients and for the total cohort. Septic patients tended to be more severely ill, older and were less likely to be post-operative patients or to have required mechanical ventilation during ICU stay. The 28-day mortality in septic patients was significantly higher than in non-septic patients.Table 1Comparison of baseline characteristics of patients with and without sepsisSeptic patients exhibited significantly higher MAXICU than non-septic patients (38.3��C vs. 37.8��C, P < 0.001). MAXICU in septic patients was more frequently in the higher range (�� 38.5��C) (Table (Table1).1). This difference was present for the first seven days of ICU stay (Figure (Figure22).

Figure 2Mean peak daily temperature of patients with and without sepsis. The white circles indicate the mean peak daily temperature in patients with sepsis. The black circles indicate the mean peak daily temperature in patients without sepsis. For the first seven …Table Table22 Batimastat shows 28-day mortality and odds ratio for each range of MAXICU relative to the reference range of 36.5��C to 37.4��C in septic and non-septic patients, respectively. Mortality did not relate to MAXICU in septic patients.