Methods
This retrospective, single-center study was conducted at Istanbul Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Training and Research Hospital, Turkey, between April to May 2020. The study protocol was approved by the institution’s Ethics Committee and registered to ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04337320).
Our study criteria included pregnant women between 18–45 years old with a history of COVID-19 positive PCR result. Patients with COVID-19 positive PCR who used systemic drugs as well as women with other endocrine and/or autoimmune disorders, pregnant women who had underlying lung disease were excluded from the study.
The demographic data of participants including age, gravidity, parity, gestational week at admission were recorded. Blood samples from each patient were obtained to determine the concentrations of D-dimer, complete blood count, ferritin, C-reactive protein (CRP), lymphocytes, alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST). At the same time, neonatal umbilical blood gas analyzes were also examined. We evaluated real-time RT-PCR tests from upper respiratory tract obtained from all patients at admission. We also requested lung CT from all patients, except for 4 patients who did not wish to have any imaging tests. Six of the fourty patients had normal vaginal delivery (NVD), others were delivered by the c-section and all newborn infants were admitted to the neonatology department for seperation from the mother and also for blood and PCR tests.
The primary outcome of our study was to compare maternal and neonatal results in pregnant women with a history of COVID-19 positive PCR result.
Data analysis was performed using the SPSS version 20 for Windows (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). Continuous variables were expressed using means with standard deviations and categorical variables were given as number (%).