Age is the main risk factor for mortality from Covid-19, according to a study carried out in Spain in which data from more than 1,200 patients with an average age of 65 years were analyzed.
The study was carried out with a sample of 1,246 patients and is published in the Archivo Abierto Respiratorio, the scientific journal of the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR).
Pulmonologist Irene Nieto, a member of SEPAR and first author of the study, explained that the objective of the study was to identify the factors that can predict patients with a higher risk of dying from Covid.
According to Nieto, the level of risk of patients with Covid-19, which can manifest itself in mild, moderate or severe forms, is essential to refer patients to the most appropriate care resource based on their evolution and severity, such as the units intermediate respiratory care.
After collecting all the medical data of the patients and analyzing it, they found that 168 patients, 13% of the total sample, died during hospital admission and that the majority of these deaths were older adults.
The study concludes that older age is the main mortality factor in patients infected with Covid, although the impact of reagents (proteins that increase or decrease during the acute phase of infection) and the type of blood cells are also relevant factors. .
Nieto stressed that “these findings can be very useful to monitor patients with Covid-19 in clinical practice and allocate them to the most appropriate care.”
The authors highlight in the study that “state-of-the-art machine learning models can provide new clinical insights, as they can detect previously unseen higher-order interactions between variables.”
Source: TSF
