Background: The infectious agent which has caused the COVID-19 pandemic is a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). On one end of the spectrum, a patient suffering from COVID-19 may be asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, while on the other end of the spectrum, a patient may develop numerous life-threatening complications. The way a host responds to infection by SARS-CoV-2 depends on various host factors like hypertension, old age, etc., The MuLBSTA scoring system takes into account various clinical and laboratory parameters and tries to predict the mortality risk for a patient. Besides, the validation of MuLBSTA score for mortality because of COVID-19 has not been extensively studied in an Indian set-up. This study is aimed at finding the association between the MuLBSTA score and the 14-day mortality risk because of COVID-19 in Indian population.
Materials and methods: This study included 122 patients who were receiving treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection at a tertiary hospital in Ranchi, Jharkhand. The disease severity (as per the ICMR guidelines), the MuLBSTA score, and the disease outcome of all patients were noted and analyzed in this study.
Results: A strong association was seen between a MuLBSTA score of ≥12 and the 14-day mortality risk in COVID-19 patients.
Conclusion: The MuLBSTA scoring system is an easy to calculate model, which predicts the 14-day mortality risk because of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This may help the primary care physicians in stratifying and referring the patients who have a higher chance of developing severe complications.
Keywords: 14-day mortality; COVID-19; MuLBSTA score; SARS-CoV-2.
Copyright: © 2021 Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.