Altered Mentation, Stroke Up COVID-19 In-Hospital Mortality

TUESDAY, Dec. 29, 2020 (HealthDay News) — For hospitalized COVID-19 patients with altered mental status or stroke upon admission, there is a higher risk for in-hospital mortality independent of disease severity, according to a study published online Dec. 18 in Neurology.

Emad Nader Eskandar, M.D., from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, and colleagues compared outcomes for 4,711 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with and without neurological involvement (acute stroke, new or recrudescent seizures, altered mentation with normal imaging, and neuro-COVID-19 complex).

The researchers found that 12 percent of the patients had neurological issues of sufficient concern to warrant neuroimaging. Compared with 1,743 COVID-19 patients matched for age and disease severity admitted during the same period who did not have neurological involvement, there was a higher risk observed for mortality among patients with altered mentation (odds ratio, 1.39) or radiologically confirmed stroke (odds ratio, 3.1).

“While other biomarker factors also predict mortality, measures to identify and treat such patients may be important in reducing overall mortality of COVID-19,” the authors write.

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