Shock Index in COVID Era

Abstract

The health care burden and risks to health care workers imposed by novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mandated the need for a simple, noninvasive, objective, and parsimonious risk stratification system predicting the level of care, need for definitive airway, and titration of the ongoing patient care. Shock index (SI = heart rate/systolic blood pressure) has been evaluated in emergency triage, sepsis, and trauma settings including different age group of patients. The ever accumulating girth of evidences demonstrated a superior predictive value of SI over other hemodynamic parameters. Inclusion of respiratory and/or neurological parameters and adjustment of the cutoffs appropriate to patient age increase the predictability in the trauma and sepsis scenario. Being reproducible, dynamic, and simple, SI can be a valuable patient risk stratification tool in this ongoing era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Evolution of a Parsimonious Prognostic Index in COVID-19

“…In the December 2021 issue of the Journal of Cardiac Critical Care, we proposed a promising prognostic index, shock index (SI) for risk-stratifying the patients ailing from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). 1 While it is indeed gratifying to witness an increasing research interest in the subject, [2][3][4][5] the elucidation of nuances of the accruing literature would be of potential interest to the readers of the Journal.…”