A new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has revealed that secondary bacterial pneumonia is the primary cause of death in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, debunking the popular ‘cytokine storm’ theory. The study analyzed 585 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital with severe pneumonia and respiratory failure, 190 of whom had COVID-19. The researchers developed a new machine learning approach called CarpeDiem, which groups similar ICU patient-days into clinical states based on electronic health record data. This innovative method allowed them to investigate how complications like bacterial pneumonia impacted the course of the illness. The findings suggest that preventing, detecting, and aggressively treating secondary bacterial pneumonia in critically ill patients, including those with COVID-19, is key to improving survival rates.
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