Publications

Benes J et al.
Sci Rep 12, 14906 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18991-2

Benes, J., Jankowski, M., Szułdrzynski, K., Zahorec, R., Lainscak, M., Ruszkai, Z., Podbregar, M., Zatloukal, J., Kletecka, J., Kusza, K., Szrama, J., Ramic, E., Galkova, K., Krbila, S., Valky, J., Ivanic, J., Kurnik, M., Mikó, A., Kiss, T., Hetényi, B., Hegyi, P. Sustic, A., Molnar, Zs.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused unprecedented research activity all around the world but publications from Central-Eastern European countries remain scarce. Therefore, our aim was to characterise the features of the pandemic in the intensive care units (ICUs) among members of the SepsEast (Central-Eastern European Sepsis Forum) initiative. We conducted a retrospective, international, multicentre study between March 2020 and February 2021. All adult patients admitted to the ICU with pneumonia caused by COVID-19 were enrolled. Data on baseline and treatment characteristics, organ support and mortality were collected. Eleven centres from six countries provided data from 2139 patients. Patient characteristics were: median 68, [IQR 60-75] years of age; males: 67%; body mass index: 30.1 [27.0-34.7]; and 88% comorbidities. Overall mortality was 55%, which increased from 2020 to 2021 (p = 0.004). The major causes of death were respiratory (37%), cardiovascular (26%) and sepsis with multiorgan failure (21%). 1061 patients received invasive mechanical ventilation (mortality: 66%) without extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (n = 54). The rest of the patients received non-invasive ventilation (n = 129), high flow nasal oxygen (n = 317), conventional oxygen therapy (n = 122), as the highest level of ventilatory support, with mortality of 50%, 39% and 22%, respectively. This is the largest COVID-19 dataset from Central-Eastern European ICUs to date. The high mortality observed especially in those receiving invasive mechanical ventilation renders the need of establishing national-international ICU registries and audits in the region that could provide high quality, transparent data, not only during the pandemic, but also on a regular basis.