MuLBSTA score in COVID-19 pneumonia and prediction of 14-day mortality risk: A study in an Indian cohort.

Abstract

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. 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. A strong association was seen between a MuLBSTA score of ≥12 and the 14-day mortality risk in COVID-19 patients. 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.