Obesity and ICU Care

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Anchor lead: When people with COVID-19 end up in the ICU obesity may be related, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Internationally, experiences with COVID-19 point to certain risk factors for severe disease and the need for intensive care unit care. David Kass, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues from around the country, have identified obesity as a major risk factor in a recent analysis in the Lancet.

Kass: We ended up with six centers, from New York, Florida, Washington state, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, with close to 260 patient data sets, three numbers, sex, age and then BMI. And then asked a very simple question: is an ICU population snapshot in America show a relationship between age, and obesity, body mass index. So the youngest patients in the units were definitely the most obese, among the sickest of the COVID-19 patients from around the country.  :33

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.