hyopomagnesemia in critically ill children

Objectives: to investigate the incidence of hypomagnesemia, hypomagnesemia-associated risk factors, and the effect of hypomagnesemia effect on prognosis among patients followed at pediatric intensive care unit. methods: this study enrolled patients who were admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit between january and december 2017. patients’ admission serum mg level was measured, and a level below 1.8 meq/l was considered hypomagnesemia. patients with hypomagnesemia were grouped as group 1 and those with normal serum magnesium level as group 2. results: a total of 59 (39.9%) of the 148 patients were female and 89 (60.1%) were male; the mean age was 62.82 ± 72.8 (min: 2 – max: 245) months. compared with the normomagnesemic patients, those with hypomagnesemia had a greater mean age (p: 0.04), prism score (p: 0.015), duration of intensive care unit stay, (p: 0.001), mechanical ventilator need (p: 0.016) and the number of days connected to mechanical ventilator (p: 0.027), having nasogastric drainage (p: 0.02), and mortality rate (p: 0.041). no significant differencewasfound between the groups with respect to diuretic use. increase risk of hypomagnesemiaby nasogastric drainagewas not significant (p: 0.082). the rates of hypokalemia, hypocalcemia, hypophosphatemia, and hypoalbuminemia were significantly greater in group 1 (p < 0.05). hypokalemia increased the risk of hypomagnesemia by 5.13 times, hypophosphatemia by 21.8 times, hypoalbuminemia by 5.12 times, and nasogastric drainage by 3.01 times. conclusions: it should be noted that hypomagnesemia might becommonand associated with mortality among patients admitted to pediatric intensive care units. therefore, serum magnesium level should be closely monitored.