(HealthDay)—Many patients who died from COVID-19 in China may have had delayed intubation, according to a research letter published online April 10 in JAMA Network Open.

Jianfeng Xie, M.D., Ph.D., from the Zhongda Hospital at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, and colleagues analyzed data from 168 patients with COVID-19-induced pneumonia who died at 21 hospitals in Wuhan, China, during Jan. 21 to 30, 2020. The authors sought to assess patient and treatment characteristics.

The researchers found that 75.0 percent of patients who died were male, with a median age of 70 years (95.8 percent were older than 50 years). Similarly, thee-quarters of patients (74.4 percent) had one or more comorbidity, with hypertension being the most common (50.0 percent), followed by diabetes (25.0 percent) and ischemic heart disease (18.5 percent). During hospitalization, all patients received oxygen therapy, with 27.4 percent receiving only nasal or face mask oxygen before they died, 34.5 percent receiving high-flow nasal oxygen therapy, and 42.9 percent receiving noninvasive ventilation. One in five patients (20.2 percent) were intubated and received invasive mechanical ventilation, while 1.2 percent received extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment. Age was not associated with intubation.

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