Identifying risk factors for mortality in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19

Abstract

There have been 112,456,453 confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide resulting in 2,497,514 deaths (February 26, 2021)(1). As a relatively new disease, little is known about the clinical predicators of COVID-19 specific mortality(2). Previous reviews have focused on either severity of the disease (3,4) or specific comorbidities (5,6) linked to mortality, where in many cases the evidence has been limited. Subsequently, the systematic review by Tian et al. aims to re-evaluate the current body of evidence to comprehensively clarify predictors of mortality in hospitalised patients with COVID-19(2). This commentary aims to critically appraise the methods used within this systematic review and meta-analysis to discuss the findings in the context of current clinical practice.