COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 16 pp 15946—15953

Clinical course and characteristics of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 in Wuhan, China: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study

Yanfang Liu1, *, , Lina Liu1, *, , Ye Wang1, , Xinyang Du1, , Hong Ma1, , Jing Yao1, ,

  • 1 Cancer Center, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, People's Republic of China
* Equal contribution

Received: April 14, 2020       Accepted: July 7, 2020       Published: August 24, 2020      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103745
How to Cite

Copyright © 2020 Liu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2) is the virus responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) pandemic. Despite the extensive studies aiming to understand the pathology of COVID-19, the clinicopathological characteristics and risk factors associated with COVID-19 remain mostly unclear. In this study, we assessed the clinical course and features of COVID-19 patients.

Findings: There were 59 patients (54.1%) that had no fever. One-hundred(91.7%) patients required oxygen therapy, which improved percutaneous oxygen saturation (SpO2). Seventy-two (66.1%) patients aged over 60; these patients were more likely to develop respiratory symptoms. Only 13(11.9%) patients were positive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid, and computed tomography (CT) findings. We found significant differences in age, respiratory symptoms, and heart rates between patients with and without underlying conditions.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that oxygen plays an important role in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and that age and underlying diseases are significant risk factors for COVID-19. Most COVID-19 patients have no fever, and CT provides higher detection rates than antibody- and nucleic acid-based detection methods.

Methods: We analyzed data from 109 confirmed COVID-19 cases. We compared the clinicopathological characteristic of patients stratified according to age and underlying diseases, as well as assessed the detection rates of different diagnostic methods.

Abbreviations

COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019; SARS-CoV-2: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; CT: computed tomography; O2: oxygen; RT-PCR: real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction; MERS: Middle East respiratory syndrome; SpO2: percutaneous oxygen saturation.