Visceral fat as the main tomographic risk factor for COVID-19 mortality

Background

Obesity is a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality; a BMI >35 increases the risk of death up to 12-fold; two previous studies have examined the association between visceral fat quantified by tomography and the risk of severe COVID-19, but not its association with mortality.

Objective

Examine whether tomographic findings differentiated data from patients who died of COVID-19 pneumonia from those who survived in a cohort of patients at a tertiary hospital.

Methods

This was a case-control study (1:1) in which we recruited data from patients at a tertiary care hospital in Mexico. Cases (N = 213) were data from patients with COVID-19 pneumonia discharged due to death, and controls (N = 216) were data from patients discharged due to improvement. All had chest computed tomography (CT) scans in the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) platform. Multivariate analysis was used to identify tomographic variables associated with mortality, and odds ratios were calculated. As tomographic variables, we refer to the total severity score, the total percentage of pulmonary involvement, the pattern of involvement, the location of the lesions, and subcutaneous and visceral fat.

Results

A total of 429 sets of data from Mexican patients were analyzed, with an overall age of 57 years (18–93). Sixty-three percent were male, and arterial hypertension was the most common comorbidity in 48.3 %. An odds ratio (OR) of 8.79 (95 % CI 1.44–53.73) was found for visceral fat and mortality; the rest of the tomographic variables did not show a statistically significant association.

Conclusion

Visceral fat was the most significant tomographic risk factor for mortality in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.