The Impact of Premorbid Illnesses on the Risk of ICU Admission and Short-term Outcome

The Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is currently involving all parts of the world. Several risk factors for critical illness and death from the disease have been proposed. However, it is still unclear if the observed associations between different comorbidities and chronic medications and severe COVID-19 disease and mortality is different from associations between the same factors and other severe diseases requiring intensive care unit (ICU) -care. This is important since some of the observed risk factors are very common in the aged who, by age alone, are more prone to a more severe course of any disease. By combining several registries, this study will compare, on several comorbidities such as hypertension and diabetes , the first 2000 cases of COVID-19 patients receiving critical care in Sweden to a Swedish sepsis-cohort and a Swedish adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) -cohort.