Risk Factors for Mortality in Patients with COVID-19 in New York City

New York City emerged as an epicenter of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

To describe the clinical characteristics and risk factors associated with mortality in a large patient population in the USA.

Retrospective cohort study.

6493 patients who had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 with clinical outcomes between March 13 and April 17, 2020, who were seen in one of the 8 hospitals and/or over 400 ambulatory practices in the New York City metropolitan area

Clinical characteristics and risk factors associated with in-hospital mortality.

A total of 858 of 6493 (13.2%) patients in our total cohort died: 52/2785 (1.9%) ambulatory patients and 806/3708 (21.7%) hospitalized patients. Cox proportional hazard regression modeling showed an increased risk of in-hospital mortality associated with age older than 50 years (hazard ratio [HR] 2.34, CI 1.47–3.71), systolic blood pressure less than 90 mmHg (HR 1.38, CI 1.06–1.80), a respiratory rate greater than 24 per min (HR 1.43, CI 1.13–1.83), peripheral oxygen saturation less than 92% (HR 2.12, CI 1.56–2.88), estimated glomerular filtration rate less than 60 mL/min/1.73m² (HR 1.80, CI 1.60–2.02), IL-6 greater than 100 pg/mL (HR 1.50, CI 1.12–2.03), D-dimer greater than 2 mcg/mL (HR 1.19, CI 1.02–1.39), and troponin greater than 0.03 ng/mL (HR 1.40, CI 1.23–1.62). Decreased risk of in-hospital mortality was associated with female sex (HR 0.84, CI 0.77–0.90), African American race (HR 0.78 CI 0.65–0.95), and hydroxychloroquine use (HR 0.53, CI 0.41–0.67).

Among patients with COVID-19, older age, male sex, hypotension, tachypnea, hypoxia, impaired renal function, elevated D-dimer, and elevated troponin were associated with increased in-hospital mortality and hydroxychloroquine use was associated with decreased in-hospital mortality.