Researchers Show That Most People On Ventilators From Covid-19 Died Of Secondary Bacterial Infections

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A new study using AI analysis claims that a major section of people who were supported by ventilators during their Covid-19 infection suffered a secondary bacterial infection that could have led to their deaths.

It is worth mentioning that secondary bacterial infection of the lung (pneumonia) was extremely common in patients with Covid-19, affecting almost half the patients who required support from mechanical ventilation.

Researchers from Northwestern University’s Feinberg school of medicine used Machine Learning, a form of Artificial Intelligence to determine that secondary bacterial pneumonia, which could not be fully treated, was the sole driver of high mortality. The team has published the findings in a paper in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“We aimed to determine the contribution of unsuccessful treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) to mortality in patients with severe pneumonia,” the paper read. Doctors also found that COVID-19 does not cause a “cytokine storm,” so often believed to cause death.

Cytokine storm means an overwhelming inflammation that drives organ failure affecting the lungs, kidneys, and brain.

“Our study highlights the importance of preventing, looking for, and aggressively treating secondary bacterial pneumonia in critically ill patients with severe pneumonia, including those with COVID-19,” senior author Benjamin Singer, said in a statement.

The team analysed 585 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital with severe pneumonia and respiratory failure. 190 of these patients had tested positive for Covid-19. The team developed a new machine-learning approach called CarpeDiem, which groups similar ICU patient days into clinical states based on electronic health record data.

“Those who were cured of their secondary pneumonia were likely to live, while those whose pneumonia did not resolve were more likely to die. Our data suggested that the mortality related to the virus itself is relatively low, but other things that happen during the ICU stay, like secondary bacterial pneumonia, offset that,” Singer added.

Researchers used state-of-the-art analysis of lung samples to diagnose and evaluate the outcomes of secondary pneumonia events.

“The importance of bacterial superinfection of the lung as a contributor to death in patients with COVID-19 has been underappreciated, because most centers have not looked for it or only look at outcomes in terms of presence or absence of bacterial superinfection, not whether treatment is successful or not,” said study co-author Richard Wunderink.