Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious infectious disease which lead to a global pandemic. This virus attacks the small blood vessels, endothelial linings and lead to impaired blood flow and vessel malfunctioning's in various organs. This explains the reason why the high vulnerability patient population is those with comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, COPD, obesity and cardiovascular diseases. The objective of the study was to compare the rates of recovery in the comorbid Covid-19 patient population when compared to those without comorbidities by evaluating their CT Chest-Score, RT-PCR, duration of hospitalization and thereby assess if the quality of life was compromised. A Prospective Observational Study was conducted for a period of 4 months with over 400 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 patients. Out of the 400 patients, considering the exclusion and inclusion criteria 191 moderately ill covid-19 patients with or without comorbidities were included in the study. The severity of the patients was assessed based on the CT-Chest Score and COVID-19 RT-PCR reports. Various other complications faced by comorbid patients when compared to patients with nil comorbidities were also investigated. In our study among the underlying comorbidities, the most common were DM (40.11%), HTN (35.32 %), CAD (7.78 %), COPD (6.58 %), CKD (5.38 %) and then hypothyroidism (4.79 %). Our study also concluded that the percentage of patients with a comorbid condition was higher (59.68%) than those without a comorbid condition (40.31%). The mean reduction in CT-Score in the comorbid and nil-comorbid was found to be 9.38 ± 2.85 and 7.08 ± 2.89. The mean reduction in hospital stay in the comorbid and nil comorbid group was found to be 9.50 ± 2.34 and 8.08 ± 1.71. The mean reduction in RT-PCR was 10.04 ± 2.95 and 7.44 ± 2.33 in the comorbid and nil comorbid group respectively. Therefore, the RT-PCT, duration of hospital stay and CT-Chest Score showed a statistical significance of p-value<0.0001. The study concludes that the comorbid patients when compared to those without comorbidities had a longer hospital stay and more time for recovery which led to a compromise in their health status.
A comparative study to assess the rates on the recovery of covid-19 patients with or without comorbidities in a tertiary care hospital