Rhino-orbital-cerebral mucormycosis associated with COVID-19 and mortality-related factors: a systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
[EN]Introduction and Objective: Rhino-orbito-cerebral mucormycosis (ROCM) emerged as a severe complication during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in patients with poorly controlled diabetes or those treated with corticosteroids. This rapidly progressing infection presents high mortality rates and significant challenges in diagnosis and management. The objective of this systematic review was to analyze the clinical factors associated with mortality in patients with COVID-19-related ROCM.Methods: A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines, using databases such as Scopus, PUBMED, and ScienceDirect. Original studies published in English between December 2019 and December 2024 were included. Study quality was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. A descriptive analysis was performed based on odds ratios (OR), relative risks (RR), and 95 % confidence intervals (95 % CI) reported in the included studies. Associations were considered statistically significant when the confidence interval did not include the null value. A meta-analysis was not performed due to methodological heterogeneity among the studies.Results: Sixteen studies were identified, reporting mortality rates ranging from 4.8 % to 66.7 %. Major risk factors associated with mortality included diabetes mellitus (67.64 %–95.33 %), corticosteroid use (72.3 %–74 %), advanced age, and intracranial or orbital extension of the infection. Early diagnosis and combined treatment (surgical and medical) significantly improved survival rates.Discussion: COVID-19-associated ROCM is strongly linked to diabetes and corticosteroid use, both of which impair immune response and facilitate fungal infection. Infection extension to the central nervous system or orbits markedly increased mortality. The studies emphasized the importance of a multidisciplinary approach and aggressive management to improve patient outcomes.Conclusions: COVID-19-related ROCM is a life-threatening complication with high mortality, primarily associated with diabetes, corticosteroid use, and infection spread. Early diagnosis and combined therapeutic strategies are essential to improve survival. Future research should focus on prospective, multicenter studies to optimize prevention and management strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".