A descriptive study of the surge response and outcomes of ICU patients with COVID-19 during first wave in Nordic countries
Funding: NordForsk (Nordic COVID-19 Activities), Finnish Society of Intensive Care. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica Foundation. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Background: We sought to provide a description of surge response strategies and characteristics,...
Published in: | Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Other Authors: | , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2022
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/2858 https://doi.org/10.1111/aas.13983 |
Summary: | Funding: NordForsk (Nordic COVID-19 Activities), Finnish Society of Intensive Care. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica Foundation. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Background: We sought to provide a description of surge response strategies and characteristics, clinical management and outcomes of patients with severe COVID-19 in the intensive care unit (ICU) during the first wave of the pandemic in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Methods: Representatives from the national ICU registries for each of the five countries provided clinical data and a description of the strategies to allocate ICU resources and increase the ICU capacity during the pandemic. All adult patients admitted to the ICU for COVID-19 disease during the first wave of COVID-19 were included. The clinical characteristics, ICU management and outcomes of individual countries were described with descriptive statistics. Results: Most countries more than doubled their ICU capacity during the pandemic. For patients positive for SARS-CoV-2, the ratio of requiring ICU admission for COVID-19 varied substantially (1.6%–6.7%). Apart from age (proportion of patients aged 65 years or over between 29% and 62%), baseline characteristics, chronic comorbidity burden and acute presentations of COVID-19 disease were similar among the five countries. While utilization of invasive mechanical ventilation was high (59%–85%) in all countries, the proportion of patients receiving renal replacement therapy (7%–26%) and various experimental therapies for COVID-19 disease varied substantially (e.g. use of hydroxychloroquine 0%–85%). Crude ICU mortality ranged from 11% to 33%. Conclusion: There was substantial variability in the critical care response in Nordic ICUs to the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic, including usage of experimental medications. While ICU mortality was low in all countries, the observed variability warrants further attention. Peer reviewed |
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