Authors: Vedrana Terkeš, Anela Toli, Marin Bištirli, Tina Marketin, Miro Morovi.
Objectives: to find a must common anchor point(s) in daily clinical work with COVID-19 patients, which could suggests to us the possible outcome.
Materials and Methods: The study population consisted of 956 patients diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19 between March 2020 and March 2023 at Zadar General Hospital, Croatia. Data collection was both, prospective and retrospective. All the patients were grouped according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines disease severity criteria. Computed tomography (CT) was performed mostly in the severe and critically ill patients and in a number of moderately ill patients with signs of disease progression. The CT score was calculated based on the extent of lobar involvement. The two primary objectives of our investigation of disease outcome were death and oxygen-dependence/independence in survivors at discharge from hospital.
Results: The mortality rate was 31.8% (304/956); oxygen-dependence were recorded in 109 (11.4%) of patients at discharge from hospital. Our results showed that there was a statistically significant correlation between the variables of age and comorbidities and death outcome. The results of the binary regression analysis of disease severity in predicting the disease outcomes, death/survival, and oxygen-dependence at discharge showed that the severity of clinical condition was a statistically significant predictor of both disease outcomes.
The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to predict the influence of the CT score values on the disease outcomes showed that there was no statistical significant difference in CT score values between the deceased patients and those who survived. However, the ANOVA analysis of variance to predict the influence of the CT score values on oxygen-dependence or independence at discharge showed a statistical significant difference (F(1,643) =32.37, p<0.05) in the CT scores between the patients who were oxygen-dependent (M=9.75, Sd=9.65) and those who were oxygen-independent (M=4.96, Sd=7.68) at discharge.
Conclusion: Our results showed that the categorization of patients according to their disease severity and CT score could be good anchor points in daily clinical works with COVID-19 patients, which could suggests to us the possible outcome to have been expected in moderate, and particularly in severe/critical patients at their admission to hospital.
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