Study Population
We initially included 215 consecutive individuals age >18
years who were admitted to the medical intensive care unit (ICU) at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital that tested positive
for COVID-19 (COVID+ ) between February 29 and
June 28, 2020. In addition, we included 110 patients who were admitted
with a suspicion of COVID-19 infection between March 13 and April 25,
2020 but who subsequently tested negative
(COVID- ) by nasopharyngeal swab polymerase
chain reaction (PCR) assay. After excluding 15 patients who were
COVID+ and 10 individuals who were
COVID- who had a diagnosis of permanent
atrial fibrillation on admission, 200 COVID+and 100
COVID-patients were analyzed. Participants in each group were subsequently
subclassified by the presence or absence of new onset ATA (Figure 1).
The project was approved by the UAB Institutional Review Board with
waiver of informed consent.