Vaccination also saved critically ill, study finds
New study at three Greek ICU shows that Covid inoculation helped intubated patients recover
Vaccination against Covid-19 is associated with reduced mortality even among patients intubated for severe respiratory failure, according to a recent Greek study published in the international peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Network Open, which examined cases of intubated patients in Greek university hospital ICUs in the fall of 2021.
Although vaccinated patients with active coverage were older and had a higher proportion of underlying diseases than unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients, mortality rates were lower.
The study was headed by Ilias Siembos, assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, USA, and Professor Anastasia Kotanidou, director of the First Intensive Care Clinic of the University of Athens.
It examined the cases of 265 intubated patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to Covid-19, who were hospitalized at Evangelismos and the university hospitals of Ioannina and Larissa, between June 7, 2021 to February 1, 2022.
About a tenth of the patients (26) had “active vaccination coverage,” meaning they had completed their vaccination at least 14 days prior to their intubation and no more than five months had passed since their second dose.
The particular timeframe was chosen because of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for a booster dose at five months after the last dose and because protection against infection decreases over time.
The control group consisted of the remaining 239 patients (unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or completely vaccinated). Active vaccination coverage patients were older than the control group (mean age 72.5 years against 66 years) and more likely to have comorbidities (92.3% versus 66.9%). Indicatively, 23% of the fully vaccinated patients had cancer, compared to 7.5% of patients in the control group.
A Cox proportional-hazards regression model was used to compare mortality between the two groups, in which vaccination status, age, comorbidities and organ failure on the day of intubation were taken into account. Of the vaccinated and actively vaccinated patients, 61.5% died compared to 68.2% of patients in the control group.
The authors said that the study showed that the benefit of vaccination against Covid-19 extends beyond the prevention of hospitalization and intubation.
