A Retrospective Longitudinal Study of COVID-19 as Seen by a Large Urban Hospital in Chicago

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created high demand for medical resources, including personnel, intensive care unit beds, and ventilators. As thousands of patients are hospitalized, the disease has shown remarkable diversity in its manifestation; many patients with mild to no symptoms recover from the disease requiring minimal care, but some patients with severe disease progression require mechanical ventilation support in intensive care units (ICU) with an increased risk of death. Studying the characteristics of patients in these various strata can help us understand the varied progression of this disease, enable earlier interventions for at-risk patients, and help manage medical resources more efficiently. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of 10,123 COVID-19 patients treated at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, including their demographics, symptoms, comorbidities, laboratory values, vital signs, and clinical history. Specifically, we present a staging scheme based on discrete clinical events (i.e., admission to the hospital, admission to the ICU, mechanical ventilation, and death), and investigate the temporal trend of clinical variables and the effect of comorbidities in each of those stages. We then developed a prognostic model to predict ventilation demands at an individual patient level by analyzing baseline clinical variables, which entails ([1][1]) a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression and a decision tree model to identify predictors for mechanical ventilation; and ([2][2]) a logistic regression model based on these risk factors to predict which patients will eventually need ventilatory support. Our results indicate that the prognostic model achieves an AUC of 0.823 (95% CI: 0.765–0.880) in identifying patients who will eventually require mechanical ventilation. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement Jump ARCHES endowment through the Health Care Engineering Systems Center at the University of Illinois ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Rush University Medical Center All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes The data is not publicly available. [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #ref-2