Matt Harmon

163 Chapter eight Figure 1 . Patient selection pathway for the PaCO 2 outcome analyses. TTM = targeted temperature management. TTM 33 and TTM 36 = TTM group, 33 or 36°C core body temperature derived from TTM-trial study [24]. n = number of patients. The diagram does not display the selection pathway for the s-Tau analysis or the sensitivity analyses. On arrival, the mean PaCO 2 was 6.40 (SD 1.99) kPa and decreased over time in both temperature (Figure 2a) and outcome (Figure 2b) groups. 516 of 869 (59%) patients were hypocapnic and 685 of 869 (79%) were hypercapnic at some time point during the analysis period. 371 (43%) were both hypo- and hypercapnic and only 39 patients (4%) were normocapnic throughout. 6-month outcome data of the exposure groups are displayed in Supplementary Table 2, Additional File 1. The ∆PaCO 2 group had a mean range of 2.88 (SD 1.60) kPa. PaCO 2 -AUC for the first four measuring points was mean 5.51 (SD 0.92) kPa while PaCO 2 -AUC for all measurements was mean 5.37 (SD 0.62) kPa. The analysis of interaction between temperature groups (33°C or 36°C) and PaCO 2 group showed no significant difference for main outcome (Pmain- outcome = 0.072 – 0.98) in all comparisons. The terms of interaction were, except for ∆PaCO 2 (p=0.046) also non-significant (Pinteraction = 0.255 – 0.947). For the ∆PaCO 2 group, the 33°C and the 36°C subgroups were analyzed separately, showing no significant association with outcome in any of the groups which made pooling of temperature groups feasible.