Short- and Long-Term Mortality and Mortality Risk Factors among Nursing Home Patients after COVID-19 Infection.
Johannes A Booij, Julie C H Q van de Haterd, Sanne N Huttjes and 2 others
PMID 35809633WHAT IT FOUND
Nursing home patients with confirmed COVID-19 had significantly higher death rates at 30 days and 6 months compared to those who tested negative.
However, patients who survived the first 30 days did not face higher mortality risks in the subsequent five months than uninfected residents.
Key findings
01Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were 3.6 times more likely to die within 30 days than those who tested negative.
02At 6 months, 53.0% of patients who tested positive had died compared to 31.6% of those who tested negative.
03Patients who survived the first 30 days after a positive test did not have a higher mortality risk at 6 months compared to patients who tested negative.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted in only two organizations in one region of the Netherlands, which may limit how well the results apply to other settings. Patients were not randomly selected, and the control group consisted of those suspected of having COVID-19 but testing negative, rather than a general random sample of residents. Symptoms and clinical parameters were only recorded on the day of initial suspicion, missing potential changes in condition in the days before or after. PCR tests can have false negatives, which might have misclassified some infected patients as controls. The study population had a high prevalence of palliative care and did not include patients transferred to hospitals, which may skew mortality outcomes.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest or funding sources were explicitly declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that surviving the acute phase of COVID-19 leads to a long-term excess mortality risk compared to uninfected nursing home residents. The study found no significant difference in 6-month mortality between survivors of the infection and those who tested negative.