Mortality outcomes for COVID-19 patients in intensive care units
Citation: Armstrong RA, Kane AD, Cook TM. Outcomes from intensive care in patients with COVID‐19: a systematic review and meta‐analysis of observational studies. Anaesthesia. 2020 Jun 30.
What is this? Some patients with COVID-19 will become critically ill and need treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU).
In this rapid review, the authors searched for studies of ICU mortality for COVID-19 patients aged >18 years. They did not restrict their searches by language of publication and did the search on 31 May 2020. They included 24 studies (total: 10,150 patients) from Canada (1 study), China (8), Denmark (1), France (2), Hong Kong (1), Italy (1), the Netherlands (1), Singapore (1), Spain (1), UK (1) and USA (6).
What was found: At the time of this review, the meta-analysis of the included studies showed that the ICU mortality rate in COVID-19 patients with a completed ICU stay was 41.6%.
At the time of this review, the included studies showed that the reported ICU mortality rates fell from nearly 60% in March 2020 to approximately 40% at the end of May 2020.
At the time of this review, the ICU mortality was broadly similar in different continents.