Pseudo-safety in a cohort of patients with COVID-19 discharged home from the emergency department.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

EDs are often the first line of contact with individuals infected with COVID-19 and play a key role in triage. However, there is currently little specific guidance for deciding when patients with COVID-19 require hospitalisation and when they may be safely observed as an outpatient.

Methods

In this retrospective study, we characterised all patients with COVID-19 discharged home from EDs in our US multisite healthcare system from March 2020 to August 2020, focusing on individuals who returned within 2 weeks and required hospital admission. We restricted analyses to first-encounter data that do not depend on laboratory or imaging diagnostics in order to inform point-of-care assessments in resource-limited environments. Vitals and comorbidities were extracted from

SUBMITTER: Yuan N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8371069 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature