In a new study from Rush University and elsewhere, researchers found that two easily measurable signs of health — respiration rate and blood-oxygen saturation — are distinctly predictive of higher mortality among patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
They found anyone who receives a positive COVID-19 screening test can easily monitor for these two signs at home to see if or when they need to seek urgent medical care.
These findings suggest that by the time some people with COVID-19 feel bad enough to come to the hospital, a window for early medical intervention might have passed.
In the study, the team examined the cases of 1,095 patients age 18 years and older who were admitted with COVID-19 to hospitals from March 1 to June 8, 2020.
While patients frequently had hypoxemia (low blood-oxygen saturation; 91% or below for this study) or tachypnea (fast, shallow breathing that rises to 23 breaths per minute for this study), few reported feeling short of breath or coughing, regardless of blood oxygen levels.
Overall, 197 of the patients died in the hospital. Compared to those admitted with normal blood oxygen, hypoxemic patients had a mortality risk of 1.8 to 4.0 times greater, depending on the patient’s blood oxygen levels.
Similarly, compared to patients admitted with normal respiratory rates, those with tachypnea had a mortality risk of 1.9 to 3.2 times greater.
In contrast, other clinical signs at admission, including temperature, heart rate and blood pressure, were not associated with mortality.
Nearly all patients with hypoxemia and tachypnea required supplemental oxygen, which, when paired with inflammation-reducing glucocorticoids, can effectively treat some acute cases of COVD-19.
The team says the findings will have an impact on primary care and virtual care providers, who typically are the first-line clinical contacts for people who have received a positive COVID-19 test result and want to monitor meaningful symptoms.
The best way for people to monitor these sometimes-silent symptoms at home is to use portable pulse oximeter devices to monitor for a blood-oxygen-level below 92%.
These devices are readily available and inexpensive tools to monitor blood oxygenation levels and identify if a person needs to come to the hospital.
If you don’t have access to a portable pulse oximeter, you also can check your respiration rate by counting the amount of times you breathe over the course of a minute.
If your blood-oxygen level falls below 92%, or your respiration rate rises to 22 to 23 breathes a minute, you should immediately call your doctor.
If you care about COVID-19 death, please read studies about a major cause of death in COVID-19 and findings of this common drug could cut COVID-19 death risk by nearly 50%.
For more information about COVID-19 and your health, please see recent studies about this stuff may drive flu, pneumonia and COVID-19 death rates and results showing that this anti-inflammatory drug could reduce COVID-19 death risk.
One researcher of the study is Henry Huang, MD.
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