Talha Mahmud, Muhammad Saqib, Uzma Nasim Siddiqui, Abdul Saeed Khan, Muhammad Aasim.
Clinical Characteristics of Hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at Tertiary Care Hospital of Pakistan.
Pak J Chest Med Jan ;27(2):68-73.

Background: Infectious diseases have always been a challenge for human civilization. Most of the infectious diseasesare caused by bacteria or viruses. The 1st pandemic of 21st century was started in December 2019 from China. World health organization (WHO) named the disease as COVID-19 which is being caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus. Risk factors associated with COVID-19 include age, gender and comorbidities. Most common symptoms at the time of presentation include fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath and diarrhea. In pathogenesis of COVID-19 infection the Inflammation has central role and disease progression also depends upon the level of inflammation. As diseases pattern varies in different parts of the world that`s why the present study was designed to study clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients with COVID19 in local population. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study and was carried out at department of pulmonology Shaikh Zayed hospital, Lahore. The duration of study was 6 months from June 01, 2020 to December 31, 2020. One hundred six (106) COVID-19 patients admitted at Shaikh Zayed hospital, Lahore and consented to participate in the study were included in the study. The data were recorded in SPSS 20.0. Results: The total number of patients registered in the study was 106, having ages between 24 and 85 years. The most common symptom at the time of presentation was fever (80.2%) followed by shortness of the breath (75.5%) and cough (62.3%). Most common co-morbid condition was diabetes (44.3%) followed by hypertension (43.4%). Chest x-ray taken in emergency department showed bilateral involvement in 67% patients, unilateral in 17%, while 16% patients had normal chest radiograph. The inflammatory markers like S ferritin, D Dimers and CRP levels increased with disease severity while lymphocytes decreased with disease severity. Among co-morbid conditions the ESRD had significantly high death rate (39.1%) as co-mpared to non-ESRD patients (10.8%) with a p-value 0.001. Conclusion: Patients presenting acutely with fever, cough, shortness of breath and/or infiltrates on chest x-rays mandates COVID testing. Presence of comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease and ESRD are common with COVID infection. ESRD patients have shown high mortality with COVID. Inflammatory markers like S ferritin, D Dimers and CRP levels correlates with severity of disease in COVID-19 patients.

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