Results
We retrospectively analyzed 205 hospitalized patients with pneumonia. 106 of the patients has been treated as PCR confirmed COVID-19 infection with a mean age of 50.12±1.79 years: 60 men and 46 women. 99 of the patients had atypical pneumonia with a mean age of 59.38±2.07: 66 men and 33 women. COVID-19 group was significantly younger than control group.
23 (19.9%) of 106 PCR posivite patients had critical COVID-19 infection with ARDS or ICU admission. The mean age of critical patients was 66.30±12.13 and it was significantly higher (p=0.000). 14 (16.7%) of 99 patients with non-COVID-19 pneumonia were severe. Mean duration of hospitalization was 7.97±5.03 days in COVID-19 infection while it was 7.20±5.23 days in non-COVID-19 group. Comorbidity frequency (diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease) in patients with COVID-19 was significantly higher than patients with non-COVID-19 pneumonia. Mortality rate in COVID-19 group as 7.54%, and it was 10.10% in the control group. Cigarette smoking ratio was significantly lower in COVID-19 group. Mean SpO2 (%) of the patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were lower than the patients with severe non-COVID-19 pneumonia in both clinics and ICU. Demographic characteristics of patients were summerized in table 1.
Fever, cough, myalgia and anosmia were more common in the patients with COVID-19 pneumonia (Table 2). Bilateral infiltrations were more often in the thoracic CT scans of COVID-19 pneumonia group (Table 2). Hemoglobin, RET-He, iron, TSAT, CRP, PCT and SpO2 of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were significantly lower than thec ontrol group (Table 3). Critical COVID-19 pneumonia group was significantly older than the patients with COVID-19 pneumonia those were treated in clinics. The comorbidity, smoking, mean lung aeration loss ratios were higher, the hospitalization time was longer in critically ill patients. As a result the mortality ratio was also significantly high in this group. Characteristics of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were mentioned in table 4.
When we compared the COVID-19 pneumonia as critical and not critical; mean values of hemoglobin, RET-He, iron, TSAT, SpO2 were significantly low in critical group where as the mean RDW, CRP and PCT were significantly higher. Laboratory findings of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were summerized in table 5.
Mean lung aeration loss of the patients with COVID-19 pneumonia was 16.04±12.23. Hb, RET-He, iron, TSAT levels significantly correlated to lung aeration loss, hospitalization day and inflamatory markers (CRP, PCT) in COVID-19 pneumonia (Table 6). We found a significant effect of iron deficiency parameters (RET-He, iron, ferritin, TSAT, Hb, RDW) on both mortality (p=0.001) and dyspnea (0.000).