How the COVID-19 pandemic influences the prevalence of pressure injuries in the Czech Republic: A nationwide analysis of a health registry in 2020.
Andrea Pokorná, Dana Dolanová, Klára Benešová and 7 others
PMID 35725785WHAT IT FOUND
Pressure injuries were recorded in more hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19 than of patients without it: 2.62% vs 0.81% overall, and 3.68% vs 1.42% in ICU.
Registry data cannot show why.
Key findings
01Pressure injuries were recorded in more hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19 than of patients without it: 2.62% vs 0.81% overall, and 3.68% vs 1.42% in ICU.
02In 2020, total hospital admissions decreased by 15.6% compared with the previous five-year period, while admissions with pressure injuries decreased by only 0.1%.
03The proportion of pressure injury categories was broadly similar between patients with and without COVID-19 in acute care.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This is administrative registry data, not clinical examination, so pressure injuries may be underreported or miscoded. Category I pressure injuries are often not in medical records, and lower categories may not be reported in the registry unless they require a reimbursable procedure. The study has no patient-level data on mobility, devices, prone positioning, skin care, staffing, or prevention measures. It compares groups at a point in time, so it cannot show that COVID-19 caused pressure injuries. The paper reports descriptive rates, not adjusted comparisons, and the 2021 registry data were incomplete.
Declared interests
Funded by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic under grant NU20-09-00094. The authors stated they have no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the higher pressure-injury rates as proof that COVID-19 caused more skin breakdown. The study is a registry comparison, not a clinical trial, and lower pressure-injury categories are not reliably reported in the registry data.