A study of the clinico-epidemiological profile of COVID-19 patients admitted in a tertiary care hospital in India

Introduction: India is the second country with the highest Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) case burden in the world In India, Maharashtra state has the highest number of cases Aim: To study the clinico-epidemiological profile of COVID-19 patients admitted in a COVID-19 designated tertiary care center in Pune, Maharashtra, India Materials and Methods: The authors retrospectively investigated epidemiological, demographic, clinical, laboratory, radiological and treatment data of 413 Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) confirmed COVID-19 patients from 14th April 2020 to 30th June 2020 The data was analysed using the Mann-Whitney U test for continuous variables with normal and abnormal distribution, respectively Also, the multivariate logistic regression was used for analysis Results: Among the 413 laboratory confirmed COVID-19 patients, 249 (60 29 %) were males, majority {87 (21 07%)} of the patients belonged to the age group of 51-60 years The most common comorbid condition found was diabetes mellitus {102 (24 69%)} The most common symptoms were fever {185 (44 79%)} and cough {146 (35 35%)} followed by breathlessness {134 (32 45%)} History of close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case was present in 205(49 64%) patients The mean time from the onset of symptoms to hospital admission was 3 75 (SD±2 642) days There was a strong association between increasing age and the need for Intensive Care Total 63 (80 77%) out of 78 patients above 60 years of age had abnormal Chest X-Ray (CXR) findings during hospitalisation Furthermore, the maximum number of deaths i e , 31 patients (58 49%, n=53) occurred in the age group of more than 60 years of age Conclusion: The findings suggest that increased value of serum Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) and Urea can be used as predictors for mortality rate Patients aged more than 60 years are more prone for severe disease with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia and this subset of patients requires urgent medical attention