Clinical profile and short-term outcomes of RT-PCR positive COVID-19 patients in a tertiary care hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Background: After one year since emerging from Wuhan, China, the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is still raging worldwide. Still, there is a dearth of original research exploring the attributes of COVID-19 patients from lower-and middle-income countries, such as Bangladesh. Based on a case series from a tertiary healthcare center, this observational study has explored the epidemiological and clinical profile of COVID-19 patients in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A total of 422 COVID-19 confirmed patients (via Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test) were enrolled in this study. We have compiled patients' medical records and reported their demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical features, treatment history, health outcome, and post-discharge complications descriptively.Result: Patients were predominantly male (64%), between 35 to 49 years (28%), with at least one comorbidity (52%), and had COVID-19 symptoms for one week before hospitalization (66%). A significantly higher proportion (P<0.05) of male patients had diabetes, hypertension, and ischemic heart disease, while females had a significantly higher proportion (P<0.05) of asthma. The most common symptoms were fever (80%), cough (60%), dyspnea (41%), and sore throat (21%). Most patients received antibiotics (77%) and anticoagulant therapy (56%) and stayed in the hospital for an average of 12 days. Over 90% of patients were successfully weaned, while 3% died from COVID-19, and 41% reported complications after discharge.Conclusion: The diversity of clinical and epidemiological characteristics and health outcomes of COVID-19 patients across age groups and gender is noteworthy. Our result will inform the clinicians and epidemiologists of Bangladesh of their COVID-19 mitigation effort.