RESEARCH ARTICLE
Investigation of in Hospital COVID-19 Mortality and One-year Follow-up of Lung Function and Health Status
Jonas Agholme1, Karin Cederquist1, Konstantinos Vougas2, Mirjam Schimanke1, 3, Tove Eldh1, 3, Petros Effraimidis1, Christina Triantafyllidou1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2022Volume: 2
E-location ID: e266695872206300
Publisher ID: e266695872206300
DOI: 10.2174/26669587-v2-e2206300
Article History:
Received Date: 12/4/2022Revision Received Date: 18/4/2022
Acceptance Date: 28/4/2022
Electronic publication date: 24/08/2022
Collection year: 2022
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Globally, thousands of patients suffer from postacute COVID-19 syndrome, a condition that already affects our health system. Although there is a growing literature upon the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, there are up to date only a few reports on long-term follow-up of pulmonary function after severe COVID-19.
Objective:
To investigate risk factors for in-hospital COVID-19 fatalities and to assess the lung function and health status at one year after hospital discharge.
Methods:
Patients who were admitted to the hospital with confirmed COVID-19 and required supplementary oxygen delivery were included in this observational cohort study. Baseline and demographic data and information about hospital stay were obtained by medical charts. Patients were divided in 3 groups: group 1 (intensive care unit (ICU)-invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), group 2 (high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) and/or none-invasive ventilation (NIV) and group 3 (regular oxygen delivery treatment). All patients were required to answer health questionnaires at one year after acute infection, while patients in groups 1 and 2 performed dynamic spirometry.
Results:
The study population consisted of 130 patients. Forty five (35%) patients died at the hospital. Risk factors for in-hospital mortality were age, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and renal disease. We did not find any significant difference in health scales between the 3 groups. Mean values of both FEV1% and FVC% in groups 1 and 2 were detected within the lower normal limits with no difference between the two groups.
Conclusion:
The main result of the study is lung function in the lower limit of normal evaluated at one-year follow-up. There were no significant differences related to initial disease severity in lung function and long-term health status, which suggests that more generous lung function testing even in less severely affected patients, could be indicated.
