Risk Factors for Severe Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

Abstract

Background: During the recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic there have been several studies implicating an association between obesity, COVID-19 severity, and mortality. This retrospective study aims to investigate the association between obesity, other risk factors, and COVID-19 mortality of patients admitted over a 6-week period to the respiratory units at the authors’ hospitals. Methods: This is a retrospective study of 71 patients who were admitted into a respiratory unit over a 6-week period where the data were analysed for correlation between various risk factors, COVID-19 severity, and mortality. The statistical analysis was performed using excel statistics and SPSS (IBM, Armonk, New York, USA) statistical software. The significance was considered at p70 years old (p25 kg/m2 (p=0.001), 17 (70%) deaths reported for patients with hypertension (p=0.008), 6 (25%) mortalities for patients with cardiovascular disease (p=0.001), 14 (30%) deaths among patients who were mechanically ventilated (p=0.00028), and 5 (20%) mortalities among patients with cancer (p=0.003). Conclusions: Obesity, cancer, mechanical ventilation, male sex, intensive care unit admission, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension are significant risk factors for mortality in patients with COVID-19.

Keywords

• coronavirus disease (covid-19)
• bmi
• mortality
• obesity