So… last spring/summer I remember that if your COVID-19 case was severe enough that you got put on a ventilator, you had something like a 50% chance of surviving.
Now that we’re more than a year out, have these numbers changed? I know that there have been improvements in understanding how to treat people (and I’d be interested in hearing about that too), but I’m also specifically interested in the odds once you’re actually on a ventilator. Does the medical establishment know better what to do for ventilated patients, and thus the odds of survival are better? Or do they know better how to keep people off of ventilators, and so once you’re so badly off that you’re on one your survival rate is worse?
(Not wondering because of me – though I suppose I wouldn’t be in condition to post in that case anyway – or anyone close to me, thankfully.)
From a study from January. CFR means case fatality rate for patients while IMV means invasive mechanical ventilation.
" Sixty-nine studies were included, describing 57,420 adult patients with COVID-19 who received IMV. Overall reported CFR was estimated as 45% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39–52%). Fifty-four of 69 studies stated whether hospital outcomes were available but provided a definitive hospital outcome on only 13,120 (22.8%) of the total IMV patient population. Among studies in which age-stratified CFR was available, pooled CFR estimates ranged from 47.9% (95% CI, 46.4–49.4%) in younger patients (age ≤40 yr) to 84.4% (95% CI, 83.3–85.4%) in older patients (age >80 yr). CFR was also higher in early COVID-19 epicenters. Overall heterogeneity is high ( I 2 >90%), with nonsignificant Egger’s regression test suggesting no publication bias.
[…]
The reported CFR was higher in older patients and in early pandemic epicenters, which may be influenced by limited ICU resources."
~Max
Lim, Z. J., Subramaniam, A., Ponnapa Reddy, M., Blecher, G., Kadam, U., Afroz, A., Billah, B., Ashwin, S., Kubicki, M., Bilotta, F., Curtis, J. R., & Rubulotta, F. (2021). Case Fatality Rates for Patients with COVID-19 Requiring Invasive Mechanical Ventilation. A Meta-analysis. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine , 203 (1), 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202006-2405OC
My understandings is IMV rates/patient were many times higher in the early parts of the pandemic, and care givers shifted away from ventilators late spring 2020 with better outcomes with other treatments. Is that not the case?