Comorbidities Associated with Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: A Retrospective Study at a Tertiary Health Care Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Due to unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide since December 2019, the knowledge about which health conditions may impact the likelihood of a person getting infected and dying with COVID-19 is limited. It is observed that the mortality rate varies from one region to another region across globally. It remains unclear how the pre-existing health conditions affect the risk of infection and severity of COVID-19. The present study was undertaken to describe the presence of associated comorbidities in the adult patients who died of COVID-19 at a tertiary care hospital in this part of India.Methods: The present study is a hospital based retrospective study, done at Yenepoya Medical College and Hospital which is a tertiary health care hospital. Data was collected from the medical records of patients above 16 years of age who died due to COVID-19 illness and details of the age, gender distribution, associated co morbidities, and laboratory investigation reports of the patients at the time of admission were obtained. Data was analyzed and compared as mean and percentage of distribution among different groups.Results: Out of 110 deaths due to COVID-19, 76 (69.09%) were males and 34 (30.9%) were females. The average age of the patients died due to COVID-19 is 57.4413.01years. The overall COVID-19 mortality above the age of 60 years is 49.09% (54). The mortality was lowest in the age group of 16-30 years (4, 3.63%). The most prevalent comorbidity associated with COVID-19 mortality observed in the study is diabetes mellitus (73, 66.3%) followed by systemic hypertension (57, 51.81%). The other comorbidities observed in the present study are: cardiovascular diseases (21, 19.09%), chronic kidney diseases (10, 9.09%), malignancies (11, 10%), chronic respiratory diseases (9, 8.1%), cerebrovascular diseases (8, 7.2%) and chronic liver diseases (7, 6.3%). Overall, 8 (7.27%) patients among 110 patients had no prior comorbidities.Conclusions: In this study we found a significant effect of age, gender and other comorbidities on risk of mortality among patients with COVID-19. In our study mortality in COVID-19 patients with age ≥60 years were at a significantly high compared to those aged <60 years. Male patients with COVID-19 were associated with significantly increased risk of mortality compared to females. Mortality was significantly higher in those patients with diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, respiratory disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease and malignancy. Adequate protection and interventions in COVID-19 patients, particularly in male patients with age ≥60 years may significantly reduce the risk of mortality.