A Novel Method to Improve the Identification of Time of Intubation for Retrospective EHR Data Analysis During a Time of Resource Strain, the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Accurate determinations of the time of intubation (TOI) are critical for retrospective electronic health record (EHR) data analyses. In a retrospective study, the authors developed and validated an improved query (Ti) to identify TOI across numerous settings in a large health system, using EHR data, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, they evaluated the affect of Ti on peri-intubation patient parameters compared to a previous method-ventilator parameters (Tv). Ti identified an earlier TOI for 84.8% (n = 1666) of cases with a mean (SD) of 3.5 hours (15.5), resulting in alternate values for: partial pressure of arterial oxygen (PaO 2 ) in 18.4% of patients (mean 43.95 mmHg [54.24]); PaO 2 /fractional inspired oxygen (FiO 2 ) in 17.8% of patients (mean 48.29 [69.81]), and oxygen saturation/FiO 2 in 62.7% (mean 16.75 [34.14]), using the absolute difference in mean values within the first 4 hours of intubation. Differences in PaO 2 /FiO 2 using Ti versus Tv resulted in the reclassification of 7.3% of patients into different acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) severity categories.