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).