Innocent bystanders: effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-COVID-19 critical illness outcomes

The COVID-19 pandemic massively impacted healthcare directly and indirectly causing staggering collateral damage on innocent bystander patients with critical illness and non-COVID-19 community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). We consider in more detail non-COVID-19 CAP because it is one of the most common causes of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission and mortality. It is propitious that McLarty et al evaluated effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on critical illness mortality.1 In 1.7 million non-COVID-19 admissions in 15 countries, ICU mortality increased slightly but significantly between 2019 (9.3%) and 2020 (10.4%), especially in low-income and middle-income countries. One evaluated mechanism of altered mortality was burden of COVID-19/ICU bed, but that did not correlate with altered critical illness mortality. Strengths of their study are the large international sample size and evaluation of COVID-19 burden per bed within sites. Limitations are findings of association without proof of causation, lack of several prepandemic years to evaluate...
Source: Thorax - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Thorax, COVID-19 Editorial Source Type: research