Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To identify distinct phenotypes of critically ill leptospirosis patients upon ICU admission and their potential associations with outcome. DESIGN: Retrospective observational study including all patients with biologically confirmed leptospirosis admitted to the ICU between January 2014 and December 2022. Subgroups of patients with similar clinical profiles were identified by unsupervised clustering (factor analysis for mixed data and hierarchical clustering on principal components). SETTING: All patients admitted to the ICU of the University Hospital of Guadeloupe on the study period. PATIENTS: One hundred thirty critically ill patients with confirmed leptospirosis were included. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: At ICU admission, 34% of the patients had acute respiratory failure, and 26% required invasive mechanical ventilation. Shock was observed in 52% of patients, myocarditis in 41%, and neurological involvement in 20%. Unsupervised clustering identified three clusters—“Weil’s Disease” (48%), “neurological leptospirosis” (20%), and “multiple organ failure” (32%)—with different ICU courses and outcomes. Myocarditis and neurological involvement were key components for cluster identification and were significantly associated with death in ICU. Other factors associated with mortality included shock, acute respiratory failure, and requiring renal replacement therapy. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Unsupervised analysis of critically ill patients with leptospirosis revealed three patient clusters with distinct phenotypic characteristics and clinical outcomes. These patients should be carefully screened for neurological involvement and myocarditis at ICU admission.