Response to COVID-19 phenotyping correspondence

Abstract

Phenotyping of COVID-19-related ARDS should be done using careful, data-driven approaches https://bit.ly/3eX65Yu

FIGURE 1

Respiratory compliance and duration of symptoms in COVID-19: a lesson in the risks of drawing premature inferences. a) Haudebourg et al. [7] observed no correlation between duration of symptoms and respiratory compliance in patients with COVID-19 receiving mechanical ventilation. b) We validated this lack of association with a separate cohort [2]. c) In contrast, Gattinoni et al. [14] recently reported a negative association between duration of symptoms and respiratory compliance. d) However, this purported association was attributable entirely to three patients who had been symptomatic for 3–4 weeks (a duration of questionable relevance to discussions of the pathophysiology of acute respiratory failure). e) When all datasets were combined (including the temporal outliers from Gattinoni et al. [14]), no evidence of a correlation was found. This illustrates the danger of drawing premature inferences from underpowered cohorts, which are prone to over-fitting and spurious correlations.