Long Branch, NJ – A pioneering Monmouth Medical Center study that collected and analyzed data to provide actionable insights to drive improvement in the care of hospitalized COVID-9 patients has been published in an international scientific journal.
The report highlights the data considerations associated with ventilator-dependent acute hypoxic respiratory failure (VDAHRF) – which is associated with a higher mortality rate – in a community hospital setting.
Titled “Covid-19 patients in a Tertiary U.S. Hospital: Assessment of Clinical Course, and Predictors of Disease Severity,” the research study conducted by Monmouth Medical Center’s Department of Medicine” has been published in the Journal of Respiratory Medicine. The study focuses on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, their clinical course and the possible predictors of intubation, and investigates the demographic, clinical, and laboratory data of confirmed COVID-19 patients to study their VDAHRF association.
The study, authored by Kenneth M. Granet, MD, Chairman, Department of Medicine; Dean Patton, MD, Medical Director, Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Critical Care Medicine; as well as Internal Medicine resident physicians Mohsin Sheraz Mughal, M.D; Ikwinder Preet Kaur, M.D; Ali R. Jaffery, M.D; Denise L. Dalmacion, M.D; and Sai Koyoda, M.D; physicians Violet E. Kramer, M.D; Sharon Weiner, M.D; and Margaret H. Eng, M.D., and Chang Wang, M.S., characterized COVID-19 patients into cohorts based on invasive mechanical requirements. Data revealed that hypoxia (oxygen saturation <90%) and elevated D-dimer and ferritin levels are associated with higher odds of intubation.
The study also found that patients who required invasive mechanical ventilation were more likely to be older in age, male, have coronary artery disease, diabetes and obesity. Likewise, the patients who were successfully weaned from ventilators were more likely to be younger in age and none had heart failure or coronary artery disease.
While similar studies have been done in Wuhan, China and New York, the study done by MMC is considered the first observational study from New Jersey that investigated demographic, clinical and laboratory data of confirmed COVID-19 patients to determine the predictors of disease severity leading to VDAHRF.
The study comes on the heels of another COVID-19 study done by the MMC Department of Medicine, titled “The Prevalence of SARS-COV-2 IgG Antibodies in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Personnel (HCP) and its Implications – A Single Center, Prospective, Pilot Study.” The manuscript presented the results of a groundbreaking study examining the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies among health care professionals working in intensive care units (ICUs). This study was also authored by a team led by Dr. Granet and Dr. Patton and was published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology as part of the Cambridge Coronavirus Collection. It ultimately indicated that proper education and utilization of personal protective equipment (PPE) is effective in protecting ICU HCP from contracting the virus even after being exposed to it.
“Information regarding the disease trajectory in patients with COVID-19 is still evolving and Monmouth Medical Center has been at the forefront of these essential research efforts,” said Eric Carney, President and Chief Executive Officer, Monmouth Medical Center and Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus. “We are deeply appreciative and proud of our physician teams who are doing the critical, lifesaving research to safely combat and treat COVID-19 patients.”
Visit here to download a copy of the most recently published article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954611120302705.
About Monmouth Medical Center
Monmouth Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH) facility, along with The Unterberg Children’s Hospital, is a regional teaching campus for Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Monmouth Medical Center offers the most experienced surgeons in robotics and other minimally invasive procedures as well as bariatric and joint and spine surgery. Monmouth Medical Center delivers more babies annually than all other hospitals in Monmouth and Ocean counties combined and the fourth most in the state. The hospital offers access to the region’s top cardiologists and the award-winning, nationally recognized RWJBarnabas heart centers. It is the only hospital in Monmouth and Ocean counties to consistently receive an “A” Hospital Safety Score by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit organization, and is one of only 53 U.S. hospitals recognized by Leapfrog as a Top Teaching Hospital. RWJBarnabas Health and Monmouth Medical Center, in partnership with Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey — the state's only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center — brings a world class team of researchers and specialists to fight alongside patients, providing close-to-home access to the latest treatment and clinical trials.