Despite unchanging patient characteristics and severity of COVID-19, mortality rates for critically ill patients treated in the ICU for the virus progressively declined over time during the first surge of the pandemic, according to researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine. The study suggests that clinicians and hospital staff rapidly improved their approach to managing the novel disease even before widespread use of evidence-based medications. The findings are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Using data from 21 ICUs across 5 hospitals within Penn Medicine, researchers looked at the outcomes of patients with COVID-19 admitted over 15-day increments starting in March 2020 and ending in July 2020. During each consecutive period, mortality over a 28-day period decreased. In-hospital mortality for COVID ICU patients in the earliest period was 43.5%. By the last 15-day period in the study, mortality dropped to 19.2%, t despite patients having the same characteristics and severity of illness.
“These findings make us proud after a difficult year,” says co-lead author George L. Anesi, an instructor of medicine in pulmonary, allergy, and critical care and co-chair of the Penn Medicine Critical Care Alliance COVID-19 and Pandemic Preparedness Committee. “COVID-19 remains a dangerous and deadly disease, but data suggests that our clinicians and front-line workers have quickly gained wisdom and practical knowledge from all of the experience and used that to help more critically ill patients survive.”
He notes that the work echoes other studies on mortality rates during the pandemic, suggesting that clinicians and providers are collectively improving their management of COVID.
This story is by Alex Gardner. Read more at Penn Medicine News.
