Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Sep 9, 2025; 14(3): 108296
Published online Sep 9, 2025. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v14.i3.108296
Racial and ethnic differences in COVID-19-associated septic shock
Song-Peng Ang, Jia-Ee Chia, Maria Jose Lorenzo-Capps, Eunseuk Lee, Jose Iglesias
Song-Peng Ang, Maria Jose Lorenzo-Capps, Eunseuk Lee, Jose Iglesias, Department of Internal Medicine, Rutgers Health Community Medical Center, Toms River, NJ 08755, United States
Jia-Ee Chia, Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Science Center, El Paso, TX 79912, United States
Jose Iglesias, Department of Internal Medicine, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, Nutley, NJ 07110, United States
Co-first authors: Song-Peng Ang and Jia-Ee Chia.
Author contributions: Ang SP performed data analysis; Ang SP and Iglesias J conceptualized and designed the study; Chia JE performed data curation; Iglesias J supervised the study; Ang SP, Chia JE, Lorenzo-Capps MJ, Lee E and Iglesias J were involved in writing and reviewing the manuscript; all of the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Institutional review board statement: This study involved analysis of publicly available database with de-identified data. Hence, ethical approval was waived by the Rutgers Health Community Medical Center Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: The National Inpatient Sample database did not provide patient identifiers and strictly adhered to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Given the use of deidentified data, informed consent was not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The data supporting this study are extracted from the National Inpatient Sample and are available upon application to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project database. Restrictions applied as these were used under license for this study.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jose Iglesias, Associate Professor, Doctor, DO, FASN, Department of Internal Medicine, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, 123 Metro Blvd, Nutley, NJ 07110, United States. jiglesias23@gmail.com
Received: April 13, 2025
Revised: May 8, 2025
Accepted: June 4, 2025
Published online: September 9, 2025
Processing time: 98 Days and 15.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Our study highlights significant racial and ethnic differences in outcomes among patients with coronavirus disease 2019-associated septic shock, with Hispanic patients experiencing higher in-hospital mortality and Non-Hispanic Black patients facing increased risks of severe complications like acute kidney injury requiring dialysis and mechanical ventilation. These disparities are influenced by multifactorial determinants, including socioeconomic status, comorbidity burden, and hospital-level factors, emphasizing the need to address healthcare inequities and improve outcomes for minority populations.