The impact of frailty and rapid response team activation on patients admitted to the intensive care unit: A case-control matched, observational, single-centre cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Frailty is a multi-dimensional syndrome associated with mortality and adverse outcomes in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Further investigation is warranted to explore the interplay among factors such as frailty, clinical deterioration triggering a medical emergency team (MET) review, and outcomes following admission to the ICU. METHODS: Single-centre, retrospective observational case-control study of adult patients (>18 years) admitted to a medical-surgical ICU with (cases) or without (controls) a preceding MET review between 4 h and 14 days prior. Matching was performed for age, ICU admission diagnosis, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation III (APACHE III) score and the 8-point Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). Cox proportional hazard regression modelling was performed to determine associations with 30-day mortality after admission to ICU. RESULTS: A total of 2314 matched admissions were analysed. Compared to non-frail patients (CFS 1-4), mortality was higher in all frail patients (CFS 5-8), at 31% vs. 13%, and in frail patients admitted after MET review at 33%. After adjusting for age, APACHE, antecedent MET review and CFS in the Cox regression, mortality hazard ratio increased by 26% per CFS point and by 3% per APACHE III point, while a MET review was not an independent predictor. Limitations of medical treatment occurred in 30% of frail patients, either with or without a MET antecedent, and this was five times higher compared to non-frail patients. CONCLUSION: Frail patients admitted to ICU have a high short-term mortality. An antecedent MET event was associated with increased mortality but did not independently predict short-term survival when adjusting for confounding factors. The intrinsic significance of frailty should be primarily considered during MET review of frail patients. This study suggests that routine frailty assessment of hospitalised patients would be helpful to set goals of care when admission to ICU could be considered.

Validation of ISARIC 4C Mortality and Deterioration Scores in a Mixed Vaccination Status Cohort of Hospitalized Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Patients in Singapore.

In this cross-sectional study, we studied performance of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium mortality and deterioration scores in a cohort of 410 hospitalized patients (51.2% fully vaccinated). area under the receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.778 and 0.764, respectively, comparable to originally published validation cohorts. Subgroup analysis showed equally good performance in vaccinated and partially or unvaccinated patients.

Real-World Use of Sotrovimab for Pre-Emptive Treatment in High-Risk Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: An Observational Cross-Sectional Study.

Data on use of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in hospitalized patients are limited. In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated the use of mAbs for early treatment of unvaccinated hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19. All inpatients at our center were screened on 27 October 2021. Primary outcome was in-hospital deterioration as defined by a composite of oxygen requirement, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, or mortality within 28 days of admission. Ninety-four out of 410 COVID-19 inpatients were included in the final analysis, of whom 19 (20.2%) received early treatment with sotrovimab. The median age was 73 years (IQR 61-83), and 35 (37.2%) were female. Although the treatment group was significantly older and had more comorbidities, there was a lower proportion of progression to oxygen requirement (31.6% vs. 54.7%), ICU admission (10.5% vs. 24.0%), or mortality (5.3% vs. 13.3%). Kaplan-Meier curves showed a significant difference in time to in-hospital deterioration (log-rank test, p = 0.043). Cox proportional hazards model for in-hospital deterioration showed that sotrovimab treatment was protective (hazard ratio, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.17-0.99; p = 0.047) after adjustment for baseline ISARIC deterioration score. Our findings support the use of sotrovimab for early treatment in hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 at a high risk of disease progression.

External validation of the PRIORITY model in predicting COVID-19 critical illness in vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

OBJECTIVES: Predictive scores are important tools for the triage of patients with coronavirus disease 2019. The PRIORITY score is advantageous because it does not require laboratory and radiologic information. However, the original development and validation cohorts studied only unvaccinated patients in early 2020. We aimed to externally validate the PRIORITY score in a cohort of patients with the novel delta and omicron variants of coronavirus disease 2019 and mixed vaccination status. METHODS: A total of 410 patients were included in a cross-sectional sampling of all patients admitted to the National Centre of Infectious Diseases on October 27, 2021. A further 102 and 136 patients with vaccine-breakthrough Delta and Omicron variant infection from April to August and December 2021, respectively, were also included. Variables at the time of admission were collected retrospectively from medical records and used to calculate the probability of deterioration using the PRIORITY model. RESULTS: Of the total 648 included patients, 447 (69.0%) were vaccinated. The mean age was 61.6 years (standard deviation ± 19.0 years), and 268 patients (41.4%) were female. A total of 112 patients (17.3%) met the primary outcome of developing critical illness or mortality. The performance of the score in this cohort was comparable with the original cohorts, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for all patients of 0.794 (95% CI, 0.752-0.835; p < 0.001), regression coefficient of 1.069, and intercept of 0.04. Subgroup analysis of unvaccinated and vaccinated patients showed that performance was superior in vaccinated individuals, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.684 (95% CI, 0.608-0.760; p < 0.0001) and 0.831 (95% CI, 0.772-0.891; p < 0.0001), respectively. DISCUSSION: Our data support the continued use of the PRIORITY score in this era of novel variants and increased vaccination uptake.