Inpatient COVID-19 outcomes in solid organ transplant recipients compared to non-solid organ transplant patients: A retrospective cohort
Date:
07/15/2021
Citation:
Avery RK, Chiang TP, Marr KA, Brennan DC, Sait AS, Garibaldi BT, Shah P, Ostrander D, Steinke SM, Permpalung N, Cochran W, Makary MA, Garonzik-Wang J, Segev DL, Massie AB. Inpatient COVID-19 outcomes in solid organ transplant recipients compared to non-solid organ transplant patients: A retrospective cohort. Am J Transplant. 2021 Jul;21(7):2498-2508. doi: 10.1111/ajt.16431. Epub 2021 Feb 21. PMID: 33284498; PMCID: PMC9800757.
Abstract
Immunosuppression and comorbidities might place solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients at higher risk from COVID-19, as suggested by recent case series. We compared 45 SOT vs. 2427 non-SOT patients who were admitted with COVID-19 to our health-care system (March 1, 2020 - August 21, 2020), evaluating hospital length-of-stay and inpatient mortality using competing-risks regression. We compared trajectories of WHO COVID-19 severity scale using mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression, adjusting for severity score at admission. SOT and non-SOT patients had comparable age, sex, and race, but SOT recipients were more likely to have diabetes (60% vs. 34%, p < .001), hypertension (69% vs. 44%, p = .001), HIV (7% vs. 1.4%, p = .024), and peripheral vascular disorders (19% vs. 8%, p = .018). There were no statistically significant differences between SOT and non-SOT in maximum illness severity score (p = .13), length-of-stay (sHR: 0.9 1.11.4 , p = .5), or mortality (sHR: 0.1 0.41.6 , p = .19), although the severity score on admission was slightly lower for SOT (median [IQR] 3 [3, 4]) than for non-SOT (median [IQR] 4 [3-4]) (p = .042) Despite a higher risk profile, SOT recipients had a faster decline in disease severity over time (OR = 0.76 0.810.86 , p < .001) compared with non-SOT patients. These findings have implications for transplant decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, and insights about the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on immunosuppressed patients.