Figure 3:

The directed acyclic graph representing causal relationships among sequential antibiotic treatment (A1 at Time 1, A2 at Time 2, and A3 at Time 3), influencers and confounding factors, and 30-day mortality (Y)

Note: A1, A2, A3 are treatment variables at each time point (either vancomycin or others). Y is a 30-day mortality. Demographics, comorbidity, severity, and past multi-drug resistance from previous EHR records are measured at baseline. Nephrotoxicity is a time-varying confounder that affects the following antibiotic prescriptions (A2, A3). In this figure, we included known risk factors between antibiotic treatment and mortality.