PLoS ONE (Jan 2022)

Trends in COVID-19 patient characteristics in a large electronic health record database in the United States: A cohort study.

  • Caihua Liang,
  • Rachel P Ogilvie,
  • Michael Doherty,
  • C Robin Clifford,
  • Andrea K Chomistek,
  • Robert Gately,
  • Jennifer Song,
  • Cheryl Enger,
  • John Seeger,
  • Nancy D Lin,
  • Florence T Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271501
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 17, no. 7
p. e0271501

Abstract

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BackgroundElectronic health record (EHR) databases provide an opportunity to facilitate characterization and trends in patients with COVID-19.MethodsPatients with COVID-19 were identified based on an ICD-10 diagnosis code for COVID-19 (U07.1) and/or a positive SARS-CoV-2 viral lab result from January 2020 to November 2020. Patients were characterized in terms of demographics, healthcare utilization, clinical comorbidities, therapies, laboratory results, and procedures/care received, including critical care, intubation/ventilation, and occurrence of death were described, overall and by month.ResultsThere were 393,773 patients with COVID-19 and 56,996 with a COVID-19 associated hospitalization. A greater percentage of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 relative to all COVID-19 cases were older, male, African American, and lived in the Northeast and South. The most common comorbidities before admission/infection date were hypertension (40.8%), diabetes (29.5%), and obesity (23.8%), and the most common diagnoses during hospitalization were pneumonia (59.6%), acute respiratory failure (44.8%), and dyspnea (28.0%). A total of 85.7% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had CRP values > 10 mg/L, 75.5% had fibrinogen values > 400 mg/dL, and 76.8% had D-dimer values > 250 ng/mL. Median values for platelets, CRP, lactate dehydrogenase, D-dimer, and fibrinogen tended to decrease from January-March to November. The use of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine during hospitalization peaked by March (71.2%) and was used rarely by May (5.1%) and less than 1% afterwards, while the use of remdesivir had increased by May (10.0%) followed by dexamethasone by June (27.7%). All-cause mortality was 3.2% overall and 15.0% among those hospitalized; 21.0% received critical care and 16.0% received intubation/ventilation/ECMO.ConclusionsThis study characterizes US patients with COVID-19 and their management during hospitalization over the first eleven months of this disease pandemic.