Sepsis is a common critical condition caused by the body’s overwhelming response to certain infective agents. Many biomarkers, including the serum lactate level, have been used for sepsis diagnosis and guiding treatment. The baseline characteristics, laboratory test results and outcomes for sepsis patients were retrieved from MIMIC III. Survival was analysed by the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate and multivariate analysis was performed to identify predictors of prognosis. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was conducted to compare lactate with SOFA and qSOFA scores. A total of 3713 cases were initially identified. The analysis cohort included 1865 patients. The 24-h average lactate levels and the worst scores during the first 24 h of ICU admission were collected. Lactate is an independent prognostic predictor of mortality for patients with sepsis. It has superior discriminative power to qSOFA, and shows discriminative ability similar to that of SOFA.

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