A total of 309 patients with SCAP were enrolled in this study, including 84 patients with COVID-19 and 225 patients without COVID-19. The study flow chart is shown in Fig. 1 (A, B). We followed up the survival of all patients within 30 days after a diagnosis of SCAP. No patients were lost to follow-up. All enrolled patients received thromboprophylaxis recommended by guideline, including 166 cases with sole low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) prophylaxis (57 patients: dalteparin sodium, 5000 IU once daily; 107 patients: nadroparin calcium, 0.1ml/kg once daily; 2 patients: enoxaparin sodium, 40mg once daily), 53 cases with sole physical prophylaxis (20 patients: active bleeding;10 patients: platelet count less than 50×109/L; 23 patients: high risk of bleeding for other causes), and 90 cases with a combination of LMWH (51 patients: dalteparin sodium, 5000 IU once daily; 39 patients: nadroparin calcium, 0.1ml/kg once daily) and physical prophylaxis. There was no significant difference in the incidence of DVT among the different prophylactic measures (38.6% [64/166],35.8% [19/53] and 30.0% [27/90], respectively; P = 0.393). The incidence of DVT in LMWH combined with physical prophylaxis group was slightly lower than that in LMWH alone group, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.172).
Ultrasound scan for screening for DVT
Lower extremity venous compression ultrasound scanning was performed for 309 patients regardless of clinical symptoms of the lower limbs (Fig. 1B). The median number of ultrasound scans was 2 (range, 1-5). Twenty-seven (27/309) developed DVT was found and the other 282 was a negative result at the first ultrasound scan. Subsequently, 186 patients underwent more than one ultrasound scan; among those, 83 developed DVT and 103 had no DVT with 2 (range, 2 ~ 5) ultrasound examinations. There was no difference in the number of ultrasound examinations between the two groups (P = 0.306).
Finally, of the 309 patients, 110 (35.6%) developed DVT, including 8 with proximal DVT and 102 with distal DVT. The incidence of asymptomatic DVT was 97 (31.4%), including 6 (2.0%) proximal DVT and 91 (29.4%) distal DVT. For all the 309 patients, the interval from onset to the occurrence of DVT for the 110 patients who developed DVT was 14 (9, 21) days, and the interval from onset to the last ultrasound examination for the 199 cases without DVT was 13 (8, 22) days. There was no difference between the two groups (P = 0.454). Among the patients suspected of having PE, 11 underwent computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CTPA), and 9 of these cases were confirmed as PE finally.
Demographics and clinical characteristics of DVT vs non-DVT patients with SCAP
Among 309 patients with SCAP, patients with DVT had longer bedridden time, higher CURB 65 (abbreviation of “confusion, urea, respiratory rate, blood pressure, age 65 years”) scores, higher pneumonia severity index (PSI) scores, higher acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) II scores, higher SOFA scores, higher Caprini scores, higher Padua prediction scores, higher Wells scores, higher D-dimer levels, higher neutrophil counts, higher lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels, and lower PaO2/FiO2 ratios compared to patients without DVT (all P < 0.05). Also, more patients with DVT had symptoms of dyspnea and leg pain, had history of VTE, chronic respiratory disease, more received sedative therapy and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), and more developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (all P < 0.05). (Table 1)
A total of 305 (98.7%) patients received echocardiogram examinations, with 108 patients in the DVT group and 197 patients in the non-DVT group. Compared to patients without DVT, those with DVT exhibited wider internal diameters of the right atrium, right ventricle, and pulmonary artery, with a higher prevalence of tricuspid regurgitation and pulmonary artery hypertension (all P < 0.05). (Table 2)
Independent risk factors associated with DVT for patients with SCAP
The results of univariate and multivariate logistic regression models are shown in Table 3. In order to reduce data duplication, we did not include thrombus prediction scores and disease severity scores in the multiple regression models. Since all patients with sedative therapy received IMV, there was a certain degree of overlap between these two variables, so we did not incorporate sedative therapy in the multivariate regression. For the 309 patients with SCAP, the independent contributors to DVT were history of VTE (OR, 20.056, 95% CI: 3.740 ~ 107.540; P < 0.001), longer bedridden time (3 days < bedridden times ≤ 7 days: OR, 6.580, 95% CI: 1.884 ~ 22.988, P = 0.003; bedridden times ≥ 7 days: OR, 32.050, 95% CI: 9.629 ~ 106.675, P < 0.001), D-dimer levels ≥ 1.0 µg/mL (OR, 2.433, 95% CI: 1.123 ~ 5.272; P = 0.024), LDH levels ≥ 400 U/L (OR, 2.269, 95% CI: 1.002 ~ 5.138; P = 0.049), and IMV (OR, 2.248, 95% CI: 1.081 ~ 4.672; P = 0.030).
Comparison of diagnostic accuracy for assessing the risk of DVT of different ROCs
Patients were split by generating random numbers to produce a training data set (n *0.7) and a validation data set (n*0.3), and there were 219 and 90 patients in each set respectively. The demographics, clinical characteristics, laboratory data, treatments, complications, and prognoses of training set and validation set patients with SCAP were shown in Supplementary Table 1. There were no differences in clinical manifestations of pneumonia, symptoms of DVT, history of venous VTE, chronic respiratory diseases, bedridden time, laboratory indicators such as LDH and the PaO2/FiO2 ratio, thrombus prediction scores and disease severity scores, the proportion of sedation treatment and IMV, the proportion of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and mortality both in-hospital and 30-day between the two sets. The demographics, clinical characteristics, laboratory data, treatments, complications, and prognoses of DVT patients and non-DVT patients with SCAP in training set were shown in Supplementary Table 2.
We selected the risk factors based on the test results of the logistic regression models in training set and proposed a new way of combining forecasting model for assessing the risk of DVT in patients with SCAP. The new prediction model, including age, history of VTE, bedridden time, D-dimer levels, LDH levels and IMV, showed a better performance in predicting DVT (AUC = 0.830; 95% CI: 0.746 ~ 0.913; sensitivity: 66.1%; specificity: 90.0%) than Padua prediction score (AUC = 0.666; P = 0.011 for these two curves) and Caprini prediction score (AUC = 0.688; P = 0.045 for these two curves) for patients with SCAP who had received guideline-recommended thromboprophylaxis (Fig. 2); yet, there was no significant difference between Padua prediction score and Caprini prediction score (P = 0.668 for these two curves) when predicting DVT (Fig. 2).
Nomogram for assessing the risk of DVT
In order to increase the practicability of the prediction model, we created a nomogram based on the selected predictors (Fig.3). There were six prediction variables. The corresponding points were obtained by making a vertical line upward based on the value of each variable. The total points were obtained by adding the points of the six variables. The predicted probability of DVT in hospital was obtained by making a vertical line downward based on the total points. The calibration plots showed good consistency of DVT between the actual observation and the nomogram prediction (Supplementary Fig. 1).
Prognosis of DVT patients with SCAP
Compared to patients without DVT, more patients with DVT were admitted to ICU. Moreover, patients with DVT had a significantly higher 30-day mortality (45.5% [50/110] vs 19.1% [38/199], respectively; P < 0.001) and in-hospital mortality (52.7% [58/110] vs 22.6% [45/199] respectively; P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in length of ICU stay and length of hospital stay between the DVT group and the non-DVT group. (Table 1 and Fig 4).