Rapid prediction of in-hospital mortality among adults with COVID-19 disease

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Abstract

We developed a simple tool to estimate the probability of dying from acute COVID-19 illness only with readily available assessments at initial admission.

Methods

This retrospective study included 13,190 racially and ethnically diverse adults admitted to one of the New York City Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H) system for COVID-19 illness between March 1 and June 30, 2020. Demographic characteristics, simple vital signs and routine clinical laboratory tests were collected from the electronic medical records. A clinical prediction model to estimate the risk of dying during the hospitalization were developed.

Results

Mean age (interquartile range) was 58 (45–72) years; 5421 (41%) were women, 5258 were Latinx (40%), 3805 Black (29%), 1168 White (9%), and 2959 Other (22%). During hospitalization, 2,875 were (22%) died. Using separate test and validation samples, machine learning (Gradient Boosted Decision Trees) identified eight variables—oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, pulse rate, blood urea nitrogen level, age and creatinine—that predicted mortality, with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 94%. A score based on these variables classified 5,677 (46%) as low risk (a score of 0) who had 0.8% (95% confidence interval, 0.5–1.0%) risk of dying, and 674 (5.4%) as high-risk (score ≥ 12 points) who had a 97.6% (96.5–98.8%) risk of dying; the remainder had intermediate risks. A risk calculator is available online at https://danielevanslab.shinyapps.io/Covid_mortality/ .

Conclusions

In a diverse population of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 illness, a clinical prediction model using a few readily available vital signs reflecting the severity of disease may precisely predict in-hospital mortality in diverse populations and can rapidly assist decisions to prioritize admissions and intensive care.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.22.21249953: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Gradient Boosted Decision Trees implemented in the XGBoost R package v 1.2.0.1 with R v 4.0.2.
    XGBoost
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A limitation of the model is that the data did not include measurements, such as markers of inflammation and coagulation, comorbidities, and indices of comorbidity and severity of illness that have been demonstrated in other studies to predict mortality.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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