High-risk COVID-19 patients are much more likely to die in the hospital when their oxygen saturation and respiratory rates are observed to be low upon admission, a team of cardiologist-researchers say. Identifying these signs of trouble earlier may help clinicians to expedite life-saving medical therapy and lower mortality risk, they contend.
Although it is recommended that medical care should be sought when hypoxemia occurs (levels of blood oxygen are lower than normal), hypoxemic patients often have no respiratory symptoms, nor are these symptoms linked to mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the specialists have found in a new cohort study. In contrast, objective signs of respiratory compromise, namely oxygen saturation and respiratory rate, are tied to a highly elevated risk of death in these patients, their research showed.
“Our study shows that indices of respiratory compromise at initial presentation that are readily measurable at home — oxygen saturation less than 92% or a respiratory rate greater than 22 breaths per minute — were each associated with elevated mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients,” wrote first author Neal A. Chatterjee, M.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle.
This increased mortality risk held true despite the existence of comorbidities, Chatterjee and colleagues found. In addition, patients with obesity were the most likely to benefit from a respiratory status assessment during acute COVID-19, they reported.
The researchers support expanded guidelines to include “at-home assessment” of these measures to ensure the best outcomes in patients who contract COVID-19.
Full findings were published in the journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.
