Impact of CHADS-VA Score on COVID-19 Disease Related Outcomes

Objective Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affected millions of people worldwide and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. The CHADS-VASc score is a scoring system used to determine the indication for anticoagulation in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and determines the risk of stroke, and previous studies have shown that it predicts mortality in COVID-19 patients well. New guidelines simplified the score as CHADS-VA score, which is free of gender factor. In this study, we planned to investigate the ability of this simplified score in predicting mortality and intensive care unit admission in COVID-19 patients. Materials and Methods All patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between January 2021 and January 2022 were screened and patients with accessible data were enrolled. The baseline characteristics of the patients and CHADS-VA scores were recorded and their relationship with poor outcomes was investigated. Results A total of 838 patients were included. Mean age of the study population was 53.8 ± 18.5 and 53.6% of them (n = 449) were male. Median CHA2DS2-VA score was 1 (0–8). Intensive care unit (ICU) admission was present in 177 (21.1%) patients. 1-year mortality was present in 86 (10.3%) patients. In multivariate regression analysis, only the CHA2DS2-VA score was predictive of 1-year mortality (OR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.05–2.55; p = 0.029). Cut-off value of CHA ₂ DS ₂ -VA score for predicting 1-year mortality was found to be 2.5 (AUC:0.863, p < 0.001) with 75% sensitivity and 81% specificity. A CHA2DS2-VA score of 1.5 (AUC = 0.725, p < 0.001) constituted the cut-off value for intensive care admission with 61% sensitivity and 74% specificity. Conclusions As a result of our study, we found that CHA2DS2-VA score is an independent predictor of 1-year mortality following COVID-19 disease. Cut-off values of CHA2DS2-VA score can be used in clinical practice to define patients with high risk for ICU admission and mortality at one year. This is the first study to report the recently simplified CHA2DS2-VA score is associated with poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients.