Differential mortality with COVID-19 and invasive mechanical ventilation between high-income and low-and middle-income countries: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression

The COVID-19 pandemic has markedly affected the health care of patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but no systematic study to corroborate this effect has been undertaken. In addition, the survival outcomes of patients with COVID-19 who received invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) have not been well established. We pooled evidence from all available studies and did a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess and compare mortality outcomes between LMICs and high-income countries (HICs). We searched MEDLINE and the University of Michigan Library according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines from December 1, 2019, to July 15, 2021, for case-control studies, cohort studies, and brief reports that discussed mortality ratios and survival outcomes among patients with SARS-CoV-2 who received IMV. We excluded studies and case reports without comparison groups, narrative reviews, and preprints. A random-effects estimate of the arcsine square root transformation (PAS) of each outcome was generated with the DerSimonian-Laird method. Seven eligible studies, consisting of 243,835 patients with COVID-19, were included. We identified a significantly higher mortality rate ( , a larger PAS) among the patients receiving IMV in LMICs (PAS, 0.754; 95% CI, 0.569-0.900;