Abstract
BackgroundHealthcare systems are under prominent stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A fast and simple triage is mandatory to screen patients who will benefit from early hospitalization, from those that can be managed as outpatients. There is a lack of all-comers scores, and no score has been proposed for western-world population.AimsTo develop a fast-track risk score valid for every COVID-19 patient at diagnosis.MethodsSingle-center, retrospective study based on all the inhabitants of a healthcare area. Logistic regression was used to identify simple and wide-available risk factors for adverse events (death, intensive care admission, invasive mechanical ventilation, bleeding > BARC3, acute renal injury, respiratory insufficiency, myocardial infarction, acute heart failure, pulmonary emboli, or stroke).ResultsOf the total healthcare area population, 447.979 inhabitants, 965 patients (0.22%), were diagnosed with COVID-19. A total of 124 patients (12.85%) experienced adverse events. The novel SODA score (based on sex, peripheral O2 saturation, presence of diabetes, and age) demonstrated good accuracy for adverse events prediction (area under ROC curve 0.858, CI: 0.82–0.98). A cut-off value of ≤2 points identifies patients with low risk (positive predictive value [PPV] for absence of events: 98.9%) and a cut-off of ≥5 points, high-risk patients (PPV 58.8% for adverse events).ConclusionsThis quick and easy score allows fast-track triage at the moment of diagnosis for COVID-19 using four simple variables: age, sex, SpO2, and diabetes. SODA score could improve preventive measures taken at diagnosis in high-risk patients and also relieve resources by identifying very low-risk patients.
Highlights
In December 2019, a cluster of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) cases was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei
There are scores to identify the risk of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with pneumonia (Ji et al, 2020), but the aim of this work is to generate a fast-track score valid for every COVID-19 patient at the moment of diagnosis
From March 10th to April 6th, 965 patients (0.22%) were diagnosed with COVID-19 out of the 447.979 inhabitants of the area covered by the university hospital
Summary
In December 2019, a cluster of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) cases was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei. A novel coronavirus was isolated and, after the viral genome was sequenced, it was named SARS-CoV-2 (Zhang et al, 2020a, 2020b; Li et al, 2020; Huang et al, 2020) This new virus has a high contagion rate, with an R0 estimated of 3 (Riou and Althaus, 2020). Aims: To develop a fast-track risk score valid for every COVID-19 patient at diagnosis. Results: Of the total healthcare area population, 447.979 inhabitants, 965 patients (0.22%), were diagnosed with COVID-19. The novel SODA score (based on sex, peripheral O2 saturation, presence of diabetes, and age) demonstrated good accuracy for adverse events pre diction (area under ROC curve 0.858, CI: 0.82–0.98). Conclusions: This quick and easy score allows fast-track triage at the moment of diagnosis for COVID-19 using four simple variables: age, sex, SpO2, and diabetes. SODA score could improve preventive measures taken at diagnosis in high-risk patients and relieve resources by identifying very low-risk patients
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
