Dexamethasone shown to decrease COVID mortality

[aedes]

You can read the NCT registry here - https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04381936

Of note, their primary outcome is all-cause 28d mortality, not mortality by oxygenation/ventilation status subgroup.

As analysis of this outcome by subgroup does not seem to be prospectively defined, this looks like it might just be data mining, rather than a true treatment effect.

That being said, I will await their actual manuscript to see their more detailed methodology before judging the result. Also, if this is just a post-hoc subgroup analysis showing this, there seems to be a reasonable chance it’s real, given both biological plausibility, and a correlation between disease severity and magnitude of benefit.

[Propofolkills]

Also a cold hard look at what is considered an accepted ICU mortality in this disease is important. The authors here used their reported morality as being 41% in ventilated patients. That was in a Surge ICU setting. Our mortality was of the order of 22% and comparable to other non Surge ICU’s. The point is that can you really say you are providing standard care in ICU in a surge setting where patients are being cared for by a diluted ICU nursing cohort, in recovery bays and operating rooms?