In what is the first large analysis of COVID-19 patients in the United States, researchers confirmed much of what has been reported anecdotally by doctors throughout the pandemic.
The findings included that the most common comorbidities — the presence of more than one disease or condition in the same person — among patients was hypertension (57%), obesity (41%) and type 2 diabetes (34%), according to the study published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers also found that male mortality rates were higher than female at every 10-year age interval and patients with diabetes were more likely to have received invasive mechanical ventilation, ICU treatment or developed acute kidney disease.
The data was collected by researchers at Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and included analysis of 5,700 hospitalized patients between March 1, 2020, and April 4, 2020, at Northwell Health, the largest health system in the state of New York.
The majority of the patients in the study were male and the median age of all patients treated was 63 years old.
At triage, about a third of all patients (1,734) presented a fever, 986 had a high respiratory rate and 1,584 patients received supplemental oxygen, according to the study.
Kevin J. Tracey, MD, president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes, said the research provides “a crucial early insight into the front line response to the COVID-19 outbreak in New York.”
