Ten months of temporal variation in the clinical journey of hospitalised patients with COVID-19: An observational cohort.
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Authors
ISARIC Clinical Characterisation Group
Baruch, Joaquín
Carson, Gail
Citarella, Barbara Wanjiru
Dagens, Andrew
Dankwa, Emmanuelle A
Donnelly, Christl A
Dunning, Jake
Escher, Martina
Kartsonaki, Christiana
Pritchard, Mark
Wei, Jia
Horby, Peter W
Rojek, Amanda
Olliaro, Piero L
Publication Date
2021-11-23Journal Title
Elife
ISSN
2050-084X
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Volume
10
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Physical Medium
Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
ISARIC Clinical Characterisation Group, Hall, M. D., Baruch, J., Carson, G., Citarella, B. W., Dagens, A., Dankwa, E. A., et al. (2021). Ten months of temporal variation in the clinical journey of hospitalised patients with COVID-19: An observational cohort.. Elife, 10 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70970
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is potentially considerable variation in the nature and duration of the care provided to hospitalised patients during an infectious disease epidemic or pandemic. Improvements in care and clinician confidence may shorten the time spent as an inpatient, or the need for admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) or high dependency unit (HDU). On the other hand, limited resources at times of high demand may lead to rationing. Nevertheless, these variables may be used as static proxies for disease severity, as outcome measures for trials, and to inform planning and logistics. METHODS: We investigate these time trends in an extremely large international cohort of 142,540 patients hospitalised with COVID-19. Investigated are: time from symptom onset to hospital admission, probability of ICU/HDU admission, time from hospital admission to ICU/HDU admission, hospital case fatality ratio (hCFR) and total length of hospital stay. RESULTS: Time from onset to admission showed a rapid decline during the first months of the pandemic followed by peaks during August/September and December 2020. ICU/HDU admission was more frequent from June to August. The hCFR was lowest from June to August. Raw numbers for overall hospital stay showed little variation, but there is clear decline in time to discharge for ICU/HDU survivors. CONCLUSIONS: Our results establish that variables of these kinds have limitations when used as outcome measures in a rapidly evolving situation. FUNDING: This work was supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Wellcome [215091/Z/18/Z] and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [OPP1209135]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Keywords
COVID-19, ICU, SARS-CoV-2, epidemiology, global health, hospitalisation, human, medicine, viruses, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, COVID-19, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Hospitalization, Humans, Infant, Intensive Care Units, Length of Stay, Male, Middle Aged, Outcome Assessment, Health Care, Retrospective Studies, SARS-CoV-2, Young Adult
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70970
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336588
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