Dr KK Aggarwal
Overall mortality of patients with COVID-19 in intensive care units (ICUs) across Europe, Asia, and North America has dropped from nearly 60% at the end of March to nearly 42% at the end of May, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis. The study by R. A. Armstrong, a fellow at Severn Deanery in Bristol, United Kingdom, and colleagues was published online July 15 in Anaesthesia. It is the first systematic review and meta-analysis of outcomes of patients with COVID-19 in ICUs.
The study searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, and Cochrane databases for studies through May that reported ICU mortality for adult patients admitted with COVID-19. The primary outcome measure was death in an ICU as a proportion of completed ICU admissions.
They found 24 relevant observational studies, which included 10,150 patients. They calculated that combined ICU mortality across all the studies was 41.6%, down by about one third from the 59.5% ICU mortality seen in the studies to the end of March. The lower mortality rate is still nearly twice the 22% mortality seen in ICU admissions for other viral pneumonias. They note that mortality is not significantly different across the three continents.
