A prediction model for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Emerging evidence shows that cardiovascular injuries and events in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should be considered. The current study was conducted to develop an early prediction model for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) during hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients.

This was a retrospective, multicenter, observational study. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients from Wuhan city, Hubei Province and Sichuan Province, China, between January 14 and March 9, 2020, were randomly divided into a training set (70% of patients) and a testing set (30%). All baseline data were recorded at admission or within 24 h after admission to hospitals. The primary outcome was MACE during hospitalization, including nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke and cardiovascular death. The risk factors were selected by LASSO regression and multivariate logistic regression analysis. The nomogram was assessed by calibration curve and decision curve analysis (DCA).

Ultimately, 1206 adult COVID-19 patients were included. In the training set, 48 (5.7%) patients eventually developed MACE. Six factors associated with MACE were included in the nomogram: age, PaO₂/FiO₂ under 300, unconsciousness, lymphocyte counts, neutrophil counts and blood urea nitrogen. The C indices were 0.93 (95% CI 0.90, 0.97) in the training set and 0.81 (95% CI 0.70, 0.93) in the testing set. The calibration curve and DCA demonstrated the good performance of the nomogram.

We developed and validated a nomogram to predict the development of MACE in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. More prospective multicenter studies are needed to confirm our results.