3 RESULTS
The mean age of 750 patients with COVID-19 included in the study was 57.1 ± 9.4 (min: 18–max: 96) years, and 53.7% were male. It was determined that 58.9% of the patients had at least one CSD, 5.2% (n = 39) had both CSD and cancer and 3.6% (n = 27) had cancer not accompanied by another CSD. Of the 66 patients with cancer, 60.6% (n = 40) had malignant solid tumours, and 39.4% (n = 26) had haematological cancer. Some of the demographic characteristics and distribution of patients with COVID-19 based on their CSD status are presented in Table 1. We observed that 32% of the participants had one CSD and 24.7% had two, whereas 11.3% had three or more CSDs.
The most common complaints of the participants associated with COVID-19 were cough (58.4%), fever (38.9%) and myalgia (38.7%), in order. The main treatments were enoxaparin (90.3%), favipiravir (86.1%) and steroids (50.5%). The clinical symptoms of the patients and treatments used are presented in Table 2.
Whereas 122 (16.3%) of all patients were treated in the intensive care unit, 67 (8.9%) of them were intubated. Intubation frequency was 54.9% (n = 67) among those who were followed up in the intensive care unit. Mean duration of hospital stay was 9.4±7.1 (min: 2–max: 63) days/patient for all patients, whereas it was 17.2±9.3 (min: 2–max: 52) days/patient for those in the intensive care unit. Complications developed in 18.8% of all participants, and 13.5% died.
The comparison of some sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19 based on their current CSD and cancer status as well as the laboratory results on the first day of hospitalisation is presented in Table 3. Accordingly, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of sex, white blood cell and platelet count and activated partial thromboplastin time. In the evaluation of other parameters, it was found that there was a highly significant difference between the groups (p < .001).
On the basis of the pair-wise comparisons of the groups, there was a difference in age in all compared pairs except in Group 2 and Group 4, (p < .001). Regarding other categorical variables, the patients in Group 1 were significantly different from those of the other groups in terms of age group, intensive care and intubation requirement, complication status and survival (p < .001). It was determined that there was no statistical difference among the other three groups in terms of these parameters. Similarly, patients in Group 1 were different from those of the other groups in terms of lymphocyte count, NLR, prothrombin time (p = .004) and levels of LDH and CRP, and the median values of this group were significantly lower than those of the other three groups (p < .001). The other groups did not differ significantly from each other in terms of these parameters. There was no difference in median values of Hb and ferritin between Group 3 and Group 4. However, the median Hb value of both groups was lower than those of Groups 1 and 2, whereas the ferritin values were significantly higher (p < .001).