Clinical characteristics, treatment outcomes and factors associated with severe illness in 813 COVID-19 patients admitted in a tertiary care hospital of eastern India.

Introduction: This retrospective observational study has been designed to identify clinical characteristics, treatment outcomes and factors associated with severe illness in 813 COVID-19 patients hospitalised in an Indian tertiary care hospital.

Material And Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of patient admitted between 1st July to 15th Aug 2020 with COVID-19 infections. Logistic regression was performed to explore the association of clinical characteristics and laboratory parameters with the risk of severe disease and mortality. The statistical significance level was set at 0.05 (two-tailed).

Results: Out of 813 study patients, 630 (77.50%) patients were categorised with mild to moderate while 183 (22.50%) patients as severe Covid infection. Mortality was significantly higher in severe Covid patients as compared to mild moderate cases (66.21% vs. 10.31%. p<0.0001. Patients with severe infection were significantly more likely to have diabetes hypertension, chronic kidney disease (CKD) and had significantly higher Neutrophil count, serum creatinine, C-reactive protein (CRP), ferritin, D-Dimer and decreased haemoglobin, lymphocyte and serum calcium than patients with mild-moderate infection. In Multivariate analy-sis, age more than 60 years [AOR: 2.114, 95% CI (1.05-4.254), 0.036], NLR more than 3.3 [AOR: 1.082, 95% CI (1.030-1.137), 0.002] and D-Dimer >1 μg/mL [AOR: 2.999 (1.464- 6.146),0.003] were found significantly associated with severe disease (p < 0.05). Factors associated with mortality were age more than 60 years, presence of breathlessness, severe disease or presence of chronic kidney disease.

Conclusions: Factors like elderly age (age > 60 years), elevated NRL, CRP, D-Dimer and serum ferritin were associated with sig-nificantly higher risk to develop severe COVID-19 infections. Elderly, and patients with CKD were associated with worse outcome.