Assessment of risk factors for death of patients with COVID-19 requiring mechanical lung ventilation

Relevance: with the increasing incidence of COVID-19, it is clear that early detection of the risk of death in patients on mechanical lung ventilation can help ensure proper treatment planning and optimize health resources.Objectives of our study was to identify predictors of the risk of death in patients with COVID-19 who required mechanical ventilation.Material and methods: research design - retrospective, observational, multicenter. Inclusion criteria: clinical, laboratory, and radiological criteria for severe viral pneumonia. Exclusion criteria: death in the first 12 hours of hospitalization. End points: need for mechanical ventilation and death. One hundred and sixty-eight patients met the inclusion criteria. The number of patients who were given a ventilator was 69 (41,1%), 47 (68,1%) of them died. Risk factors were determined by calculating the odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval. The discriminative ability of factors was evaluated using ROC analysis with the calculation of the area under the curve (AUC ROC).Results: the most significant risk factors for require of mechanical ventilation in patients with COVID-19 were a large extent of changes in the lung parenchyma, more than 5 points of the SOFA scale and blood D-dimers >3000 ng/ml. Deceased patients were more likely to be men and initially had statistically significantly higher points of the SOFA scale, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, and blood interleukin 6 (IL-6) count >186 ng/ml. However, the discriminative ability of these risk factors was moderate (AUC ROC from 0.69 to 0.76). In deceased patients, there were no changes in the PaO2/FiO2 ratio, blood D-dimer count, and SOFA severity assessment in the first three days of intensive care.Conclusion: Predictors of the development of an unfavorable outcome of the disease with moderate discriminative ability in patients with severe COVID-19 on mechanical ventilation are an increased score on the SOFA scale, an increase of the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, high levels of D-dimers and IL-6 in the blood.