Clinical characteristics of critically ill patients with COVID-19

Carboni Bisso, I.; Huespe, I.; Lockhart, C.; Masso, A.; Gonzalez Anaya, J.; Hornos, M.; Famiglietti, R.; Di Grazia, M.; Coria, P.; San Roman, E.; Las Heras, M. J.

Objective Describe the clinical and respiratory characteristics of critical patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Design Observational and retrospective study over 6 months. Setting Intensive care unit (ICU) of a high complexity hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Patients Patients older than 18 years with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 were included in the study. Variables of interest Demographic characteristics such as sex and age, comorbidities, laboratory results, imaging results, ventilatory mechanics data, complications, and mortality were recorded. Results A total of 168 critically ill patients with COVID-19 were included. 66% were men with a median age of 65 years (58-75. 79.7% had at least one comorbidity. The most frequent comorbidity was arterial hypertension, affecting 52.4% of the patients. 67.9 % required invasive mechanical ventilation (MV), and no patient was treated with non-invasive ventilation. Most of the patients in MV (73.7%) required neuromuscular blockade due to severe hypoxemia. 36% of patients were ventilated in the prone position. The length of stay in the ICU was 13 days (6-24) and the mortality in the ICU was 25%. Conclusions In this study of critical patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 in a high-complexity hospital, the majority were comorbid elderly men, a large percentage required invasive mechanical ventilation, and ICU mortality was 25%.