• Abbas Al Mutair, Alyaa Elhazmi, Saad Alhumaid, Gasmelseed Y Ahmad, Ali A Rabaan, Mohammed A Alghdeer, Hiba Chagla, Raghavendra Tirupathi, Amit Sharma, Kuldeep Dhama, Khulud Alsalman, Zainab Alalawi, Ziyad Aljofan, Alya Al Mutairi, Mohammed Alomari, Mansour Awad, and Awad Al-Omari.
• Research Center, Almoosa Specialist Hospital, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia.
• Medicina (Kaunas). 2021 Aug 26; 57 (9).

AbstractBackgroundand Objectives: COVID-19 is a novel infectious disease caused by a single-stranded RNA coronavirus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We aimed to conduct a nationwide multicenter study to determine the characteristics and the clinical prognostic outcome of critically ill COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Materials and Methods: This is a nationwide cohort retrospective study conducted in twenty Saudi hospitals. Results: An analysis of 1470 critically ill COVID-19 patients demonstrated that the majority of patients were male with a mean age of 55.9 ± 15.1 years. Most of our patients presented with a shortness of breath (SOB) (81.3%), followed by a fever (73.7%) and a cough (65.1%). Diabetes and hypertension were the most common comorbidities in the study (52.4% and 46.0%, respectively). Multiple complications were observed substantially more among non-survivors. The length and frequency of mechanical ventilation use were significantly greater (83%) in the non-survivors compared with the survivors (31%). The mean Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score was 6 ± 5. The overall mortality rate of the cohort associated with patients that had diabetes, hypertension and ischemic heart disease was 41.8%. Conclusion: Age; a pre-existing medical history of hypertension, diabetes and ischemic heart disease; smoking cigarettes; a BMI ≥ 29; a long mechanical ventilation and ICU stay; the need of ventilatory support; a high SOFA score; fungal co-infections and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) use were key clinical characteristics that predicted a high mortality in our population.

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